I want my students to view a film or multimedia. Can I play this online to my students?
Answer
In a bricks-and-mortar classroom, the ‘public performance’ exemption allows you to show a film or other multimedia work to your students for educational purposes. The online environment is more complicated: here, the same act would ordinarily constitute a ‘broadcast’ (which is prohibited) rather than a ‘performance’.
However, a risk-managed approach should be employed in this scenario. It could be argued that showing film to a matriculated cohort of students becomes permissible where the ability to screen in a bricks-and-mortar classroom is impractical. However, these sessions should be delivered through a closed network, and should not be recorded or subsequently shared. The film must only be shown for educational purposes (i.e. not for entertainment or social purposes, where a screening licence would be required). To ensure that your use of the film remains consistent with a ‘performance’ rather than a ‘broadcast’, the film should only be shown during a timetabled session: it should not be placed on a network and made available asynchronously for students to access at a time of their own choosing.
For commercial streaming services such as Netflix, you will have entered into a contract with the company, and this carries its own terms and conditions to which you must adhere. Normally these prohibit the sharing of any content outside your own household. However, a small number of Netflix documentaries can be used with students for educational purposes: see https://help.netflix.com/en/node/57695
TED Talks are released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence, and can therefore be used within an online classroom environment. Your use must be non-commercial, you must credit the creators, and you cannot edit or otherwise manipulate the video. Further information is available at https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-usage-policy