The Association for Information, Media and Equipment (AIME), a nonprofit trade association of educational video publishers, and New York-based Ambrose Video Publishing (AVP) recently filed a copyright infringement and breach of contract suit against The Regents of University of California and UCLA.
The plaintiffs charge that UCLA has illegally streamed copyright-protected DVD titles hundreds of times for use by faculty and students both on and off campus on the University's Web-based Intranet, using a technology system called Video Furnace, which enables the recording of content and subsequent delivery as video-on-demand to computers and set-top boxes..
According to the complaint filed with the US District Court of the Central District of California, UCLA had acquired a series of BBC productions of Shakespeare plays. The DVD streams of the series were linked to course websites and accessible to students and faculty enrolled in or teaching the course.
Upon learning of UCLA's practice, AVP challenged the university, citing copyright law, and the fact that streaming was a violation of the AVP DVD license. AVP also offers institutional streaming licenses for its titles.
UCLA countered these challenges, claiming fair use as well as a public performance exemption for face-to-face teaching and digital distance learning uses.
According to the court filing, UCLA has placed over 2,500 titles on its file server for use by students and faculty. The titles include hundreds of documentary films distributed by such respected companies as The Criterion Collection, California Newsreel, Women Make Movies, among many others.
Given the educational market's longstanding preeminence as a major and steady revenue stream for documentary filmmakers, this case has significant implications for the documentary community. IDA will be monitoring the developments of this case and posting updates on www.documentary.org.
To download the PDF of the US District Court Filing of AIME v. The Regents of the University of California, click here.