A teacher has been threatened with a lawsuit if he shows a documentary film, Eyes on the Prize, about civil rights to his students and members of the local community.
Eyes on the Prize is a documentary which used lot of licenced clips from other films but the licences were only granted for a limited period, which ran out some years ago. So, unless the documentary maker wants to re-licence the offending clips then they can't show or sell [etc] the film.
And anyone downloading it from Downhill Battle is also infringing copyright. Copyright law provides a defence for use in an educational context but the rules are complicated and didn't stop this teacher being threatened, nor, if he had decided to go ahead (which he didn't) do they gaurantee he would win any court case arising as a result.
I was just talking to a trusted friend and colleague about the impact of intellectual property in education this afternoon...
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