The Copyright Office has recently issued standards regarding educational off-air videotaping. The University is adopting the Copyright Office standards summarized below.

Public Broadcast

Certain programs over public, non-commercial stations may be recorded off-air by educational institutions. This action is intended to accommodate classroom viewing and the recordings must be erased after seven (7) days.

Commercial Broadcasts

An educational institution may tape a program* and retain it for 45 calendar days provided:

• Such recordings are used only once for teaching and repeated only once, where reinforcement is necessary, in the first ten class days following the taping.
• After ten class days, it may be used in the classroom only for teacher evaluation, i.e., only to decide to include the program in a curriculum after receiving permission from the copyright owner.
• Videotapes must be erased or destroyed after the 45-day period.
• Taping may only be done in response to a request from an individual teacher and not in anticipation of a request.
• All recordings must include the copyright notice of the broadcast.
• Additional copies, reproduced to meet legitimate teaching needs, are subject to all provisions governing the original tape. Recordings need not be used in their entirety, but the original content may not be altered, combined, or merged into anthologies or compilations.
• Recording programs at home and playing them in class is allowed, if all guidelines are followed.

Audiovisual news programs (local and regional newscasts, interviews on current news events, on-the-spot coverage of news events) may be distributed on a loan basis.

* Programs are defined as television programs transmitted by television stations for reception by the general public without charge.

ISSUED BY: University Comptroller 03/16/87