Abstract
I undertook this paper so that I, along with other librarians and educators, could better understand how to comply with copyright law, conserve university resources, and streamline services to students regarding the procurement of public performance rights (PPR) for films and other audiovisual resources. Student groups frequently screen films on campuses, and accepted legal interpretations of sections 101 and 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act indicate that a specific license should be sought for any public performance of a copyrighted audiovisual work. My review of PPR information on the public websites of the 38 members of the ORBIS-Cascade Alliance (an academic library consortium in the Northwest) points to the potential for greater collaboration with student affairs professionals and other campus departments to provide more accurate and complete information about PPR and library audiovisual resources (e.g., DVDs or streaming media) that have PPR attached. Campus-focused resources about PPR should include information about fair use, educational exemptions, public domain, open licenses, and library-licensed content that comes with PPR. The academic library community could undertake a project to enhance the accessibility of accurate and supportive PPR information to student groups by creating tools or best practices. This area is ripe for more current research.
Highlights
Campus groups regularly screen films for a variety of reasons, including education, awareness raising, and entertainment
As I began reviewing the literature, I noticed that most detailed analyses of public performance law in relation to audiovisual works were written in the 1980s and ‘90s, following several cases that illuminated judicial interpretations of “public performance” (Cochran, 1992; Heller, 1992; Kheit, 1999)
Major developments have occurred that librarians and other educators should be aware of when supporting campus groups with film screenings, including the TEACH Act (2002) and increasingly popular film streaming platforms that often come with some form of public performance rights (PPR) (Farrelly & Hutchison Surdi, 2016)
Summary
It is perhaps axiomatic to note that copyright’s 20th century expansions gave rise to an environment in which people routinely violate copyright without understanding how their behaviors are infringing or what the potential risks of infringement are (Tehranian, 2007). Students are unlikely to intuitively recognize that they need permission to publicly perform audiovisual works separate from procuring a legal copy or what a “public performance” may constitute. The need to purchase rights for campus screenings arose from several statutes within the 1976 Copyright Act and was clarified through case law, especially concerning the definition of “public place.” Heller (1992) notes that even state-level attorneys general differed over their applications of “public place” to prisons in the decades following the most recent Copyright Act. creating a policy about PPR that accurately reflects the law and is sufficiently clear and simple for users can be, in Heller’s words, a “Sisyphean task.”
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