Copyright issue to show a movie/literature for free?

[Cuchu]

I need to have a particular movie and literature like a text (from a book like Shakespeare's work or a text-based case study like the one used by business schools/MBA programmes) to be viewed by participants in an experiment study for free legally. Any ideas?

For the movie, I was thinking to put a link to a website where people can watch some movies online for free. That shouldn't be illegal, I reckon?
I haven't found the website that has the movie I was looking for: The Merchant of Venice and WallStreet or Other People's Money.
I've tried peekvid etc. but still no luck so far. Any recommendations on these kind of websites would be appreciated heaps.

For the literature, I'm looking for again The Merchant of Venice literature or one of these case studies used by business schools/MBA programmes.
If I purchase my own copy and make that copy of mine available for others to view, would it be illegal?

[jpatokal]

I need to have a particular movie and literature like a text (from a book like Shakespeare's work or a text-based case study like the one used by business schools/MBA programmes) to be viewed by participants in an experiment study for free legally. Any ideas?

You can do it for free, or you can do it legally, but you can't do both.

The obvious answer is to put it up yourself with username/password protection, and then give the link and IDs only to the people in the study. If you do this in the US and use only small excerpts, not the whole thing, it might even qualify as fair use and would hence be legal.

[bigfilsing]

Yes, if you control the envoiroment you can show a movie to invited guests.

It's perfectly legal for you to buy the DVD then show a movie at home to invited guests. So think along similar lines and remember as soon as money changes hands it becomes illegal. As long as you set it up as a study you should be fine.

You could even do it with torrents. as long as you created a private tracker with pasword so only your guests would get access.
And before everybody gets on my back it IS perfectly legal to share content on the net/web. As long as you dont infringe any copyrights.
By sharing it with a select group its the equivilent of watching it together at someones home or borrowing the DVD from each other.

Do you need to show the whole movie?
Of course you could always get in touch with the copyright owner and explain what it is you want to do and see if they are willing to help out.

Good luck

[Cuchu]

Do you need to show the whole movie?

Cheers so much for the advice both of you!

I most likely have to show the whole movie unfortunately to eliminate the risk that the users get confused of not seeing the whole story
But you're probably right that I can ask the webmaster or even share the video file I own.
Will look into it more too, thanks again!
But for those who know otherwise perhaps, please do give me your input, it'd be much appreciated too. Cheers!