You should be able to license content, but pointing a camera at the screen is a criminal matter, not merely a civil one.  Maybe the University will continue to pay your salary, but I suspect that's unlikely.

However, fair use 'generally' provides for using short exceprts for commentary, illustration, satire.  Education, IIRC, isn't part of that.

Does you university include warnings about copyright on student coin-op copiers?  San Diego State University has had them for more than 3 decades.  Funny that you would think that digital gives you a work around or putuative right that you don't have with paper copies.

John Willkie

-----Original Message-----
From: dan.grimes@xxxxxxxx
Sent: Jun 30, 2008 1:30 PM
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] MVPD and VOD; A Solution to Time-Shifting

Here in Las Vegas, there is a group under Cox Communications, the Hospitality Group, that offers programming to hotels. The system is not the usuall cable system. They push digital content to servers in each of the hotels and offer the programming as VOD. As I understand it, a full week's schedule of every channel (I don't know how many) is stored on the server and it all is available VOD and complete with a full programming guide.

Now, to me, this makes a lot of sense. I would be interested in subscribing to services that pushed all the media to a DVR in my house and I could chose to watch any program when I wanted. Naturally, this would take a lot of storage space. Perhaps I can't have every program, so perhaps I subscribe to just the channels I want. One thing that won't work is having to set the record times. That works for the programs you know about, but not the ones you don't and might be able to find by "surfing" the storage. And then you could "surf" on the program level rather than channel by channel and only what is being offered at the time.

There is still one problem: sharing. I realize that sharing media is not allowed, but what if I saw a story and I wanted someone else to see it? How do I get it to them? It would be great if I could simply send them a pointer that cues up the very program on their own storage. That way I'm not distributing the material and they get to see the story.

Actually, there is still one more issue: fair use. If the media is locked up on a DVR, how do I get access to use it in a lecture or other "fair use" category? Well, I guess under fair use, there is nothing that requires it to be available for fair use. I suppose you could make a photonic bridge: point a camera at the screen!

Dan