Back in the Stream

You may recall a brief episode in which classes which used streaming video at UCLA suddenly had the service cut off – and then restored after a brief interval. The practice of making such video course assignments available over a password-protected network to students was challenged in court as a copyright violation. The university restored the service when it concluded there was not a copyright violation. (You can find earlier posts about this matter on this blog.) A court victory was announced by the university yesterday. However, questions remain about how general the victory is. See below:

Court dismisses lawsuit challenging UCLA practice of streaming instructional videos

Steve Ritea, October 4, 2011, UCLA Today

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging UCLA's practice of streaming previously purchased video content for educational purposes. In dismissing the copyright lawsuit filed by a video distributor and a trade association for educational video-makers, U.S. District Court Judge Consuelo B. Marshall in Los Angeles ruled Oct. 3 that "the type of access that students and/or faculty may have, whether overseas or at a coffee shop, does not take the viewing of the DVD out of the educational context. The Court finds that the licensing agreement allows [the university] to put the DVD content on the UCLA Internet network as part of the provision of the agreement that [UCLA] could 'publicly perform' the DVD content."...

Full article (including link to actual court decision) at http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/court-supports-ucla-streaming-203459.aspx

Inside Higher Ed has a narrower take on the court ruling, indicating it was decided on narrow technical grounds:

…(L)egal experts say the decision hardly resolved the central question of whether streaming copyrighted videos in online classrooms is protected under the fair use provisions to U.S. copyright law…

Full article at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/05/judge_dismisses_ucla_video_streaming_copyright_lawsuit

Note: Streaming video means that the student clicks and then sees the video on his/her computer without downloading it. For example, when you click on a YouTube link and see the video, you are looking at streaming video. Yours truly can tell you that when the temporary cut off of streaming video at UCLA occurred, the university did not cut off student access to files that contained video but had to be downloaded to the student’s computer first to be viewed. (And, of course, course assignments to view videos from public sites such as YouTube were not affected.)

So not to worry. One way or another, we are back in the stream: