Educational Use Only

You may see this warning, or something similar to it, whenever you watch a pre-recorded DVD or videotape. You may scan through it without even thinking about it and if you are just viewing it in your own home, you don't really need to. But when you need it duplicated it becomes a very serious matter.

The Instructional Media Center abides by the copyright laws when copying any material, audio or video. Luckily for faculty and graduate students who need something copied for a legitimate educational use, there is an educational exemption in the copyright laws which allows you to have copied ALMOST anything that you may need.

We have already researched the copyright laws with the Vice President and Provost's office. What follows is not to be taken as expert legal advice (for that, check this website), it is instead a distillation of the advice we got from UT's copyright lawyers and how we apply it when doing duplications in the IMC.

The vast majority of duplication requests the IMC gets in do not involve copyrighted materials. Most of what we duplicate are original works or footage filmed by Communication faculty or graduate students. In those cases the person asking for the duplication already owns the copyright and thus there is no problem.

Sometimes a copy of copyrighted material is necessary. Educational institutions are given great freedom in copyright law in their use of copyrighted materials if the materials are put to educational use.

"Educational Use" can be defined as any use that is in pursuit of the department's academic goals. Uses can include collecting, copying, replaying and use in new original works. Any number of students can be involved in such uses which can be in the classroom, in a lab, in a library, or off campus. Any use other than educational use, especially any possible commercial use, is strictly prohibited and could result in severe legal action being taken against the university.

These special rights given to students and educators stem from the "fair use" provision in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 which states that to use someone else's copyrighted work "...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or for research, is not an infringement of copyright."

When taking in a duplication request:

1. As long as you have a legitimate educational reason for having copyrighted material copied (usually teaching or research) and as long as you sign the copyright statement on our duplication request form stating that fact, we can copy, without much legal worry, almost anything you want us to.

2. RENTAL DVDS AND VIDEOTAPES ARE ALWAYS EXCLUDED.
THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS.
The video rental stores, when they buy their DVDs and tapes, purchase not only the rental rights but also any possible duplication rights. If you bring in something that has a label on it which says something like "Blockbuster Video", "Hollywood Video", or "Vulcan Video", etc... we will have to decline to copy it. We can not record any of it – even a small clip.

3. If however, you purchased a prerecorded DVD or videotape somewhere, borrowed a prerecorded video from a friend or a library, or taped something off of television, we can copy that.

Please note, each duplication request is different and is judged individually. You need to realize that there is a certain degree of gray area in the copyright law and that when a decision is not clear-cut, it often becomes simply a judgment call. IMC staff will at all times use their best judgment when determining if a request is reasonable and does not violate copyright laws.