Could a library stream films for patrons?
As much as I love this idea, I have to say that it probably isn’t wise in the current legal climate. “In film studies, everyone’s a pirate,” a prof in my film studies program once told me (due to everyone wanting to obtain copies of films to study, etc). That said, he was referring to smaller-scale, less-official distribution, usually between colleagues. What you’re talking about would essentially have at least implied university-sanction (in that it would be running on university hardware/network connectivity) and be relatively well-known if it were used by students. This would make it hard to keep below-the-radar. If you don’t obtain proper permissions and the copyright holders catch you, they will want their pound of flesh. Even though the MPAA isn’t active in Canada, there is a Canadian equivilant. I hear about them paying off prominent politicians relatively frequently. Most likely your school’s library will not participate in the development of the project without appropriate per
Distributing entire films, even within an educational context, really seems like it’s exceeding the notion of fair use to me (and I’m pretty liberal about the whole fair use idea). You might argue that streaming is more like performance than distribution, and since you require a password, it’s not a public performance, and so streaming is morally and legally equivalent to showing the film in lecture. Yeah, talk to a lawyer before you rely on this argument. I think the first people to talk to would be the university librarians. I’m guessing that the ones dealing with their video and/or digital collections have dealt with this kind of situation and they would be sympathetic to what you’re trying to do. (Disclaimer: I am not remotely an expert in any of the several fields relevant to this question.
