Q. What are public performance rights?

Public performance rights (PPR) indicates that a film was purchased with a license that allows it to be shown legally in a public setting.

Faculty and associates often want to show movies in a public setting for their clubs, classes or organizations. Please be advised that unless the movie is in the public domain or you acquire the movie with public performance rights, you will be be infringing on someone's copyright.  Just as you cannot rent a movie from Netflix and then screen it in a public space, you cannot show movies in a public setting without first determining if you have permission to do so.

Only a small percentage of the DVDs in Berkeley's Libraries have PPR, mostly documentaries. But the Berkeley College Library subscribes to a large number of streaming academic film collections with PPR rights. Faculty are permitted to utilize videos and movies from any of our licensed streaming video collections. Titles from these collections can be shown in the classroom or embedded within a Canvas course.

If you are on campus, you can access our streaming media collections by clicking here!

Faculty can also request that the library purchase PPR rights to a motion picture (a commercial film from a studio). Click on the “Swank Motion Pictures” link in the above guide to browse available titles in our SWANK Digital Campus Collection. Follow directions on the LibGuide to request purchase of ones that we don't have yet.

Kanopy Films is another large streaming media database of mostly educational films that we provide access to, but only certain films needed for classes are immediately available. Follow the instructions on the Kanopy FAQ to request us to lease (or renew the lease) of a film that isn't playing immediately.