It is permitted for the sole purposes of illustration for instruction, as long as its use is fair, with clear evidence of its educational and non-commercial purposes and appropriately acknowledged. 

You must be able to justify why the students need to watch before and then clips face-to-face for a teaching/educational purpose. It would undoubtedly be for you as an academic to defend the showing/copying of the entire work. If you were planning to copy for teaching and the film isn’t available via any other source, I feel there is an argument to rely on the education exception.

It still represents a risk to your university and might be worth checking with your legal team, so the use needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis to see if the following was met.

  • A full acknowledgement in the metadata. 
  • Recording can only be available to students for two days and then must be permanently deleted. 
  • The recording is only available to students studying on the unit and is password protected. 
  • Students cannot download the recording. 
  • A message in the metadata that reads this is ‘Made available under Section 32 of CDPA, 1988 and must not be copied or distributed by students’. 
  • Justification by the academic for showing the entire work rather than a clip.

Please note that material available through a Higher Education subscription, such as Box of Broadcasts (BoB), has territorial restrictions, and students connecting from abroad cannot gain access.  

Can I upload broadcasts and movie clips?

What about hyperlinks and copyright?

Can I make a transcript or a third-party-owned video?

Can I link to YouTube?

Can I use TED Talks?

Can I link to videos and films?

The author takes no responsibility for the content of this page, which is not intended as binding legal advice. The views are about copyright in the UK Higher Education sector context.