You found the perfect three-minute clip — a primary-source documentary excerpt, a bilingual chemistry explanation, a short interview that sets up this week's reading. You want to use it in your synchronous Zoom class or embed it in your LMS for asynchronous students. The legitimate path is real, specific, and supported by federal law. The TEACH Act was written precisely for this situation, and Creative Commons content opens an even simpler door when the clip you need happens to be licensed for reuse.
Have a CC-licensed or public-domain clip you need for this week's class? Paste the URL into TubePull and download a clean MP4 in seconds — no account required. TubePull also supports MP3 audio extraction for audio-focused lessons. The rest of this guide walks through the TEACH Act's eight qualifying conditions, what counts as "reasonable and limited," and where CC alternatives save you the analysis entirely.
What the TEACH Act actually covers
The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act — passed in 2002 and codified at 17 U.S.C. § 110(2) — updated copyright law for the reality of distance learning. Before it, the face-to-face classroom exemption under § 110(1) covered in-person instructional performances but left online classrooms in a legal gray zone.
At its core, TEACH carves out a specific exemption: accredited nonprofit educational institutions can perform or display copyrighted works in online courses without permission, under defined conditions. This is not fair use — it is a statutory exemption with a hard checklist. The Mizzou Libraries TEACH Act guide, the GCC Library TEACH Act overview, and the Iowa State Pressbooks copyright guide for teachers all lay out the conditions in plain language.
The eight conditions to qualify under TEACH
Miss any one of these and the TEACH exemption does not apply. You fall back to fair use or need permission.
1. Your institution must be an accredited nonprofit. For-profit online universities and corporate training programs do not qualify. Public K-12 schools and accredited community colleges do.
2. The transmission must be made by, at the direction of, or under the supervision of an instructor. Clips embedded in a course by an instructor for enrolled students qualify. Publicly posted content on a university marketing channel generally does not.
3. The transmission must be an integral part of a class session offered as a regular part of systematic mediated instructional activities. The clip must be tightly tied to the course's learning objectives — not supplemental entertainment or filler. If you can explain in one sentence why this specific clip teaches the concept covered this week, you meet this condition.
4. The work must be directly related and of material assistance to the teaching content. This adds a proportionality test. A three-minute documentary excerpt illustrating a historical event is "directly related." A forty-minute prestige film used to fill time is not.
5. The transmission must be made solely for, and reception limited to, enrolled students. Your LMS must require login. Materials posted on a public-facing course page break this condition.
6. Reasonably prevent retention and redistribution. Your institution must use access controls and session-expiring links that discourage students from saving permanent copies or sharing clips outside the course. This is mostly a policy and LMS configuration question, not a burden on individual instructors.
7. The institution must have adopted and reasonably implemented a copyright policy. Most accredited institutions have one. If your institution has no policy on file, the TEACH exemption is unavailable regardless of how well you follow every other condition.
8. The institution must provide informational materials to faculty, students, and staff about copyright. If your institution has a library copyright guide or faculty handbook section on intellectual property, you are almost certainly covered.
What "reasonable and limited portions" means in practice
TEACH does not set a bright-line number of minutes. It permits the amount comparable to what would be performed or displayed in a live classroom. In practice:
- Short clips in context — two to ten minutes of a longer work to illustrate a specific point — are clearly within the spirit of the act.
- Full episodes of TV programs, full feature films, and full concerts are not.
- Consumable educational works — workbooks, standardized test prep materials, digital textbooks sold to students — are explicitly excluded from TEACH.
The Gonzaga University fair use guide for online teaching puts it well: a short clip that supplements your teaching is categorically different from a long performance that substitutes for students buying or streaming something themselves.
When TEACH does not apply: reaching for fair use
TEACH requires accreditation, institutional policy, and technical access controls. But fair use under 17 U.S.C. § 107 is always available as a parallel analysis, even for scenarios TEACH does not neatly cover — a faculty member at a for-profit institution, or a community educator outside the formal accredited system.
The four fair use factors evaluated in an educational context generally favor:
- Short clips over complete works.
- Factual or documentary content over highly creative works (narrative films, music videos).
- Commentary, illustration, criticism, or parody over passive display.
- Uses that do not substitute for purchasing the work.
None of this is a guarantee. Fair use is a defense evaluated after the fact if a rights holder files a claim. For recurring, systematic use of the same content semester after semester, the "market effect" factor becomes more significant — and licensing or finding a freely-licensed alternative makes more sense than relying indefinitely on fair use.
Creative Commons: the simpler path when it works
For a growing category of educational content, the TEACH analysis is unnecessary because the creator already licensed the work for reuse. YouTube's Creative Commons Attribution license explicitly permits download, redistribution, and even modification — the only requirement is crediting the creator.
CC content can be:
- Downloaded and hosted locally in your LMS — eliminating the risk that a YouTube video disappears before the semester ends.
- Edited and captioned to meet accessibility requirements without worrying about derivative works.
- Used by any instructor regardless of whether their institution has a TEACH-compliant copyright policy.
The download-creative-commons-youtube guide covers the search workflow in full. Short version: run your YouTube search, click Filters, and tick Creative Commons under Features. Verify the license in the video's description before downloading.
For openly licensed educational video specifically, YouTube is not your only source. The Khan Academy library releases most content under CC-BY-NC-SA. MIT OpenCourseWare publishes lecture videos under CC-BY-NC-SA. TED talks have their own reuse policy — some are CC-licensed, some require specific attribution.
What is clearly NOT allowed
Entire films and full TV seasons. Performing a complete copyrighted film in an online classroom is not TEACH-compliant and is unlikely to survive fair use analysis. Purchase an institutional streaming license from Swank, Criterion, or a distributor.
Consumable educational works. Practice test books, drill-and-practice workbooks, and licensed textbook chapters designed to be purchased per-student are explicitly excluded from TEACH's reach.
Public redistribution. Recording a synchronous class session that includes copyrighted clips and posting that recording publicly — anywhere without access controls — strips away the TEACH exemption entirely.
Repeated, systematic use without reconsideration. Using the same thirty-minute documentary excerpt every semester for ten years without exploring a license is the kind of market-effect problem the fourth fair use factor exists to flag.
A practical workflow for compliant video use
Once you have determined the clip qualifies — TEACH-compliant, CC-licensed, or fair use after analysis — here is the workflow:
- Identify the clip's license. Check the YouTube description for the License line. CC-BY reads "Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)."
- Download a local copy. Embedding from YouTube means the video might disappear before your semester ends. A local MP4 in your LMS is far more reliable. TubePull handles the download.
- Verify captions are accurate. For accessibility compliance, review captions before embedding. The subtitle download guide walks through pulling an SRT file from any captioned video.
- Note your legal basis. A brief comment in your course materials log — "TEACH § 110(2): 4-minute excerpt, integral to Week 5 lecture on X" — is the kind of documentation that matters if questions arise later.
- Trim to the relevant portion. TEACH and fair use both reward proportionality. Using two minutes of a thirty-minute documentary is a stronger position than using twenty.
How TubePull fits in
TubePull supports every download scenario a teacher might legitimately need: MP4 at multiple resolutions for local LMS hosting, MP3 audio for audio-focused content, and SRT caption files for accessibility. Downloads for CC-licensed videos are free, require no signup, and produce clean files without ad watermarks or quality degradation.
The single most practical thing an educator can do before the next semester starts: build a local library of the clips you return to regularly. Stop relying on YouTube being up, the channel being active, and the embed working on your LMS. A folder of clean MP4s with a one-line attribution note next to each one is a course that works even when the internet does not cooperate.
Disclaimer. This article is general guidance for educators and is not legal advice. Copyright law varies by jurisdiction, and institutional policies vary by school. The TEACH Act applies in the United States and to accredited nonprofit educational institutions; check your institution's copyright policy and consult your library's copyright specialists before relying on any exemption for systematic, repeated use of copyrighted material.