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**
The following is the library’s Acquisitions
Department’s policy on purchasing videotapes and DVDs priced to
reflect the inclusion or exclusion of “public performance rights.”
The library considers owning a video and
loaning it for the individual use of our patrons to be a “fair
use” of the item and does not feel that we need to own public
performance rights for this use. For this reason, any video purchased
for the library from a standard source will not be purchased with public
performance rights. However, some video publishers feel that all library
use constitutes “public performance” and make an effort
to sell their products to us with public performance rights, at an elevated
price that reflects the value of these rights. One example is Films
for the Humanities and Sciences, who sell all their videos with public
performance rights attached, and sell them at a price that reflects
this fact. Other publishers, however, sell their products at different
prices for “individuals” (without public performance rights)
and for “institutions” (with public performance rights).
Even though we do not desire or require public performance rights, these
vendors do not offer us (as an institution) their products at the lower
“individual” price, so we are forced to purchase the video
at the higher price. Our policy in this situation is to respect the
pricing model created by the publisher and make our purchasing decision
based solely on the only price available to us (the higher price), with
no regard for the lower price. We will not misrepresent our standing
to these vendors in order to avoid the unnecessary purchase of public
performance rights. The exception to this situation would be if we were
able to purchase the video through a third party that did not distinguish
between types of customers.
**This policy
was written by Mike Persick and was developed in consultation with Donna
Fournier and Norm Medeiros.
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