Re: Cable TV instruction

From: Laura N. Gasaway <unclng[_at_]email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 08:38:00 -0700 (PDT)

     See responses below.

Lolly
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Laura N. Gasaway			phone:  919-962-1049
Director of the Law Library &		fax:    919-962-1193
   Professor of Law			email:	laura_gasaway[_at_]unc.edu

Law Library, CB # 3385
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599

On Mon, 7 Oct 1996 Glen McKay <GMCKAY[_at_]BETA.NMJC.CC.NM.US> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> An English professor at my community college wants to teach
> American Literature over a cable TV access channel to the general public
> in the local area served by the college. While available to the general
> public the course's intended audience would be registered students.
>
> The professor has a PhD. and intends to create her own content for
> the telecourse on American Lit, borrowing here and there excerpts from
> classical literature such as you or I would do if we were writing a
> research paper, using short quotations and citations. I think the
> beauty of this is that, presumably, the professor and the college own
> the work being created. But here's my question:
>
> What if the professor wants to enrich the course by displaying
> two or three pictures per one-hour segment, such as the cover of a book,
> or a color plate of a painting or photograph which relates to the
> literature she is commenting upon? I suppose she'd be sliding the
> graphic underneath a document camera and displaying it to the students
> for a few seconds or so as she teaches.

     Section 110(2) of the Copyright Act permits the display of a work in instructional broadcasting if certain conditions are met. They way you describe the course, it appears that these conditions are being met.

> I know section 110 has language which ostensibly precludes against
> that kind of transmission. Is the law so rigid though to proscribe
> against ephemeral usages such as this? Seems to me the publisher of the
> work which contains the graphic would benefit from the publicity.

     Section 110(2) also permits the performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work for instructional broadcasting. The difficulty is that other types of works (such as movies and audiovisual works) are excluded from performance by the statute.

     Under the CONFU process, there are distance learning guidelines being developed which hopefully will make it easier for teachers to use all types of works, at least once, without permission. Received on Wed Oct 09 1996 - 12:46:56 GMT