Updates on MPAA threats
Two excellent articles on the MPAA threats to clubs that show movies on campus came out this week, with the Daily Gazette reporting Campus movie screenings in limbo and the Phoenix declaring Movie showings may be illegal. Unfortunately, I missed the meeting with the deans, but Free Culture Swarthmore will continue to be involved in this process.
It seems to me that one key legal question is what matters to the public performance classification: the number of people that you invite, or the number of people who actually attend? For many of our movie groups, the entire campus of 1400 people is invited, but only 5-10 people show up each week. It may prove difficult for them to justify a budget for licensing fees if they don’t have high attendance.
If what matters is how many people you invite, it seems to me that our movie groups may have to do three things that they do not want to do, in order to avoid the “public performance” classification and licensing fees:
(1) Stop accepting college funds to buy/rent their movies, because if they do they have to make the event open to everyone on campus.
(2) Stop advertising to the campus, which will reduce the number of people who show up even further.
(3) Move from the nice classrooms and lecture halls on campus to TVs in dorm lounges, because you have to reserve space in order to use classrooms, and reserving space makes your reservation appear online and counts as advertising.
However, I’m not sure that the “number of people you invite” standard makes sense…. you may invite many more people to your private party than the number you expect to actually intend. You may even post a general invitation on your blog, as I did for my last house party. Are you then forced to get a public performance license when only 10 people show up to your house party, as expected? The key difference there, of course, is that your private party is supposed to be composed of your friends. However, it may be more like friends of friends, or social acquaintances, or people who were randomly passing through… I’m not completely convinced there is a qualitative difference. Oh well, I’ll try to research it some more.