This statute is relevant whenever copies are displayed, or works are performed in a face-to-face classroom setting. To display something includes the simple showing of a work, whether it is a picture, a page of text, a book cover, a chart, or other work. To perform something includes to recite, play, or act the work, or to show sequential images from an audiovisual work, or to make audible the accompanying sounds.

Begin with the premise that in the traditional face-to-face teaching, nearly all displays and performances are allowed. Section 110(1) allows almost any "performance" or "display" in the nonprofit educational context, when the activities are in the classroom or other similar location.

The "face-to-face" language apparently does not have to be read literally. The report from the House of Representatives, which accompanied passage of the 1976 Act, states:

The concept does not require that the teacher and students be able to see each other, although it does require their simultaneous presence in the same general place. Use of the phrase "in the course of face-to-face teaching activities" is intended to exclude broadcasting or other transmissions from an outside location into classrooms, whether radio or television and whether open or closed circuit. However, as long as the instructor and pupils are in the same building or general area, the exemption would extend to the use of devices for amplifying or reproducing sound and for projecting visual images.

This explanation may mean that we can display and perform works through some closed-circuit system that delivers them to other locations on campus-a common need for popular classes, where all students are unable to meet in one room. That capability is crucial for campuses that lack large auditoriums for basic and popular courses.

Distance learning makes such uses of works whenever a professor shows a chart or picture or a video clip and the images are transmitted to students at other locations. Section 110(2) of the Copyright Act deals with the transmission of performances and displays in distance education. Click here to read Section 110(2).

See also: Libraries and Public Performances and Displays
Viewing Movies and Other Audio-Visual Works at the University: Educational Needs and Copyright Law

Last Updated March 6, 2006