Week 6: Distance Education and TEACH Act

The "ARL Issue Brief: Streaming of Films for Educational Purposes" caused some confusion for me regarding fair use.  The authors refer to "recent judicial decision" that ruled in favor of fair use regarding digital technologies.  At the end of the discussion of these court cases, they state "The courts nonetheless found these uses fair because the defendants repurposed and recontextualized the works."  This left me confused because as far as I knew, fair use only involved four factors - purpose of the use, nature of the work, amount used, and effect on the market. 

After a little searching, I found an article by Troy Hicks for the Conference on College Composition and Communication on "Transforming Our Understanding of Copyright and Fair Use."  The most relevant section clarifies "If a copyrighted work is simply retransmitted, then it is a violation of copyright law. But, if the user 'transforms' the material in some way, repurposing it in a new media composition, for instance, then fair use likely applies."  This makes sense because a "transformed" work is less likely to have an effect on the market for the original work.  Furthermore, Russell in chapter two of Complete Copyright lists "transformative or productive use" as a factor under Purpose that favors fair use.  So repurposing or recontextualizing a work does fall under the four factors after all.

The first thing I noticed in Lipinski's article is that he was a visiting professor at the University of Pretoria, South Africa.  If it is at all relevant to our discussion on distance education, it would be neat to hear about his experiences there in class this Friday.

Since his article focuses on distance classes and I've only ever taken face-to-face classes, I have not experienced the effects of the TEACH Act personally.  However, I was surprised to discover that performances or displays for "recreation or entertainment" are not allowed in face-to-face as well as distance classes.  My teachers K-12 showed movies solely for that purpose routinely at the end of each semester.  At first it seems strange that they all disregarded this rule but, on the other hand, who would have any motive for enforcing it? 

For example, in middle school we watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas more times than I can remember each December (probably because of its convenient length and G rating).  We never once discussed, wrote papers, or otherwise integrated it into the curriculum so the viewing was solely for entertainment.  The copyright holder wants to sell as many copies as possible so he/she has no interest in telling a school they can't purchase a non-educational movie.  The teachers and students both enjoy the lack of effort involved in spending a class period watching a movie so they have no motivation to complain.  The only potential enforcers could be school administrators or parents looking to improve the students' education but, in my experience, neither seem to raise the issue.  Since this law is routinely broken and no one seems to have an interest in enforcing it, I wonder why it exists at all.