Case+52+-+Netflix

Mr. S is a fifth grade teacher at a struggling urban school. Many of is students have reading and attention issues. Mr. S has discovered, that showing popular movies is a great way to cover a lot of historical and social studies content in a short period of time. The students love the movies, and he uses them to motivate students to have discussions, write essays, and produce digital stories or other artwork. Mr. S has a Netflix account, which he can log into from his school computer that is connected to a video projector. Most of the movies he shows are available this way, the ones that aren’t are sent to him on DVD. Mr. S knows that by showing the entire film instead of just a portion that he is entering murky waters, but he rationalizes that his students are also learning about story arc and the arts of story telling and movie making. Either way he is using the work for educational purposes and is making the effort to follow fair use guidelines. He knows that he cannot be held liable, and the worse case scenario is that he may be asked not to show the whole movies.

Commentary: 1) Mr. S is showing the movies in historical and social context, for non-profit educational. 2) All of the movies shown contain accurate historical representation and/or real life scenarios; relevant to the subjects he is teaching. 3) Mr. S might not need to show the entire movie to gain the historical/social benefits, but he also wants his students to understand story telling and movie making techniques that they can apply to their own projects. 4) The movies are not available for viewing outside the class, and it is unlikely that any of is fifth graders would be renting these movies on there own, so there is definitely loss of marketability or income for Netflix or production company. In fact his students may even encourage others to watch a film they saw in school, which could result in additional income for the production company.

While the showing of the entire film may be questionable, Mr. S has a good faith justification, and both he and the school are completely protected from litigation.

Robin Sheridan