My understanding of copyright and classroom use of videotape goes is
that it's quite liberal under the "fair use" exclusions to copyright protec-
tion.  That is, use of videotape for research or instructional purposes
constitutes fair use and thus does not require payment of royalty fees.
Examples would include videotaping a program off-air and playing it back
in class.  The limitation is that it must be a ONE-TIME use.  You can't
archive the tape in a university A-V center, for example, since that would
deprive the creators of royalties from potential sale of those videotapes.
     As far as using rental or purchased videotapes for instructional pur-
poses, that seems to be "fair use" as well.  As long as you are not charging
admission or otherwise profiting without distributing some of the profits to
the creators, you're safe.  (Recently, film studios charged a nursing home
with copyright violation for showing rental videotapes--the nursing home was
a profit-making operation and you could argue that part of their ability to
earn a profit was based on their showing of copyright films.  Thus the studios
and others involved in the production deserve a share of those actual or
potential profits.  The same would go for showing videotapes in bars or
in rooms in video rental stores ›the "Nickelodeon" case in PA|.)
 
     One of the hazy areas of copyright for academics is in the inclusions of
lyrics in scholarly research.  I recently had a paper returned (unread) from
a major journal saying that printing it would be violation of copyright be-
cause it included lyrics from songs.  Has anyone else had similar experience
with lyrics or other creative works (movie/TV dialogue?)?