<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, helvetica">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by BurneyFalls:
A private, non-profit, university around here is playing DVD's without paying any rental fees. They say they are doing it legally because they can tie in the film's subject matter with some class subject. Is that legally possible?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Well, it's POSSIBLE, yes.
If the film has been purchased by the University and is part of the university's video library, often those videos will be licensed for "public" exhibition on the university.
Or, it's also possible that the university is getting permission from the distributor for each film it shows. A few groups on my campus have managed to get permission to show movies in our theater for free.
In most cases, though, the studios don't care if you're showing the movie for "educational purposes"--they want to be paid if you're publicly showing their movie. Period.
As part of Fair Use, clips from a movie can be shown in an academic context without specific permission, but not the whole movie.
Odds are, though, that they're just mis-reading Fair Use and are showing the movies in violation of copyright law. Unless there's a whistle-blower, though, odds are that they'll never get "caught".