At a symposium today, a relatively new group called the Copyright Alliance is offering to help professors get a sense of which movies they can show in class without getting in trouble for copyright infringement.

The only problem with the idea is that, as long as the copy is obtained legally (e.g., bought, borrowed, or taped off of Channel 5), it is not an infringement to play a copyrighted work in the context of classroom instruction at a nonprofit educational institution. You can play 3 songs from a CD, a whole movie, or the last drive from tonight’s football game, and it’s 100% legal.

As Section 110 of the Copyright Act(FN4) states:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106, the following are not infringements of copyright:

(1) performance or display of a work by instructors or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction…

Despite this unusually clear statute, Copyright Alliance chief (and former PFF man Patrick Ross proposes a wiki where professors could see which movies and other copyrighted works have been cleared for use in other classrooms. He envisions Professor A deciding to use a movie, asking for permission to play it in the classroom, getting it, describing this experience on the wiki, and then Professors B and C feeling safe in using the same movie in their classes.

In short, he tells professors: Ignore the rights you already have, and come ask us for permission instead. When we give it to you drip by drip, you can shout gleefully on our wiki.

Then, Ross has the chutzpah to say, “There’s going to have to be trust won on both sides, I think, for this to succeed.”

Can’t you feel the trust building already?