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Remember the Anatomy and Physiology teacher in Case Study #31? 

The high school science teacher with 2 sections of Anatomy and Physiology. One class is a conventional class in his science room and the other class is a 4-way full-motion video class broadcast to other school districts in Pennsylvania.  His class has texts for his conventional course, but the administrators in the other 3 high schools said they could not purchase these expensive college level texts.  His principal and superintendent told him to teach it the best way he could.  So he used the same PowerPoint slides shows in his distance learning class as he used for the past 3 years.  He created these slide shows by scanning pictures in the text.  He told the remote classes to print copies of the shows which he emailed to the remote classrooms.  

I forgot to mention that all four schools videotaped all of his lessons so they could play the videotapes as a video only course next year and not need the teacher since he was retiring. 

Is this legal? 

Is it Fair Use? 

Recording illegal distance learning classes is worse yet.  Each playback of each recorded lesson in each classroom is a copyright infringement.  The teacher also possesses intellectual property rights in teaching these lessons.  Does your teacher/school-board contract address this issue?.  He has a right to sue for royalties too.  And don't forget about the kids, the parents could sue for not getting parental permission to include their children in producing video classes they no longer participate in during the second year.  Now we are talking CNN news for major litigation.  

It is not fair use it all and does not meet the 4 Factor Fair Use test.  This is a flagrant violation on 2 counts.  Even under the CONFU guidelines for educational multimedia teacher-made materials, the teacher can't use the same slide shows past 2 years without written permission.  The most blatant violation is not supplying texts to the students in the other 3 classes.  His superintendent should not have permitted this distance learning class to be taught under these circumstances.  The text book publisher and author (s) can sue and will likely win a case against all 4 school districts.  The teacher might only have to pay a $200 fine for thinking he was following the educational fair use policy, but the 4 districts could face a multi-million dollar fine because each classroom is a violation and each video tape recording of each lesson is a violation times (4) four. 
 

Meeting the 4 Factor Fair Use test and obtaining parental permission, teacher permission, publisher permission, and/or commercial media permission are all required for distance learning classes.  That's how to avoid a seat in the courtroom!