Plex Media Server in School

[webby74]

Hi all

 

I'm a plex user at home and love how easy it works. It got me thinking that it would be handy in school too. A central media server for Videos downloaded, TV recordings, Films etc for various uses in school. I know that we have the relevant licenses to show films etc in school, but I have a question about digital copies of DVD's the school owns. Where do we stand with this?

 

Also does any other school use Plex as their media server?

 

Interested to know your thoughts. Many thanks.

[localzuk]

Copyright rules allow for "fair dealing". To put it simply, in the words from the IPO "Displaying a few lines of poetry on an interactive whiteboard will be permitted but uses which would undermine sales of teaching materials still need a licence."

 

There's not a specific bit about ripping and streaming DVDs in the law, but my reading, using the above as guidance would be:

 

1. If you want to rip the DVD that you've bought, it would only be OK if it was impossible to buy a digital copy for use.

2. If you want to play that digital copy, you would have to buy an equal number of copies to the number of concurrent streams/copies of the file in use.

3. If there is a digital copy available for use, then you ripping the DVD would mean the copyright owner is losing revenue - therefore you would still need to buy the digital licenses per 2.

 

That way, your use only consists of format shifting something you already own - the company isn't losing any income.

 

All that said - there is no absolute yes/no! It is on a case by case basis and there is no case law that I know of which clarifies anything!

 

EDIT:

 

My thought on this would be - stick your videos in your VLE. You'll have less trouble managing them as Plex wants things in certain names/formats etc...

Edited May 7, 2015 by localzuk

[beancole]

I looked at this a while ago (I love plex) I gave up on the fact that there are like above some issues with copyright. And with movies for exaple and TV they must have the correct naming convention otherwise plex wont show them. I came to the conclusion the easiest way for this would be to have a read only area for student which staff can write things to.

[LeMarchand]

I looked at this a while ago (I love plex) I gave up on the fact that there are like above some issues with copyright. And with movies for exaple and TV they must have the correct naming convention otherwise plex wont show them. I came to the conclusion the easiest way for this would be to have a read only area for student which staff can write things to.

 

I agree that it's a copyright minefield. Though on the subject of Plex, I found it a lot more forgiving than some of the alternatives (though specials and merged episodes seem to be a bit iffy - this may be due to my not changing my conventions from when I used Media Center). It's not been updated for a while, but I find TVRename works great to rename TV.

[Quackers]

You are allowed to 'Format shift' legally now, so its ok to rip a DVD to a digital file. But thats for personal use. No idea how that covers schools wanting to do the same.

[Arthur]

It's not been updated for a while, but I find TVRename works great to rename TV.

FileBot is a good alternative that still gets updates.

[localzuk]

You are allowed to 'Format shift' legally now, so its ok to rip a DVD to a digital file. But thats for personal use. No idea how that covers schools wanting to do the same.

 

Not entirely so. You can format shift for personal use if there is no DRM protecting it. If there is DRM then you can apply to the Secretary of State to complain about it...

 

Schools have an entirely different set of rules to follow.

[Scaggnetti]

If you can ensure that students can't copy the work or use it outside of school it should be okay. We use Plex Server to show legally obtained film clips in classes over our local network at the school. We copy films and load them on the server. Anyone who accesses these films must have to have access to our network. That access is protected via usernames and passwords of enrolled students and current faculty and staff. I don't know if your IT department has this set up to control access to your network, but in our system I believe it is perfectly legal as long as the material copied to your Plex server was legally obtained.

 

Below are resources I used to determine if what we are doing is legal.

 

U.S. Copyright Office - Copyright Law: Chapter 1

 

These guidelines are from the University of Texas. https://copyright.lib.utexas.edu/ccmcguid.html

At the bottom it has a list of institutions that endorse the guidelines. One of the institutions listed is the U.S. Copyright Office.

[Marci]

UK Copyright Law and US Copyright Law are two wildly different beasts I'm afraid - in the UK, doing as you've stated is not legal, and simply constitutes as distribution of pirated material. (Note the flags under each poster's username)