Academic and Business Use of Video on Demand

Considering Video on Demand for academic uses? The guidelines below are designed to help you understand the legal and policy protections for restricted and sensitive student information and copyright issues that apply both to instructors and students.

• For video content related to an official course or class, instructors should use Canvas, the university’s web-based course management platform.
• Video on Demand is not intended to be an alternative to Canvas. Sharing content on Video on Demand is only appropriate to support university academic, research, and outreach missions or other official Cornell business use. Personal use of Video on Demand is prohibited.

Copyright and Academic Integrity

• Faculty own the copyright of original content that they have entered into the Video on Demand service, according to Cornell University Copyright Policy, unless other contracts or agreements have been arranged specifically between the faculty member and the university.
• Students own the copyright of content they contribute, unless they are working in their capacity as a Cornell employee or other holder of a university appointment.
• Staff content is considered work for hire and therefore owned by the university.

Moreover, use of Video on Demand must responsibly observe all laws and university policy incorporated into Cornell Codes of Conduct and Academic Integrity. 

Specific aspects of law and policy that are pertinent include prohibitions against copyright infringement, plagiarism, harassment, and interference with the underlying technical code of software.

For more policy details, visit University Policy 5.1: Responsible Use of Information Technology Resources. 

Family Education Rights Protection Act (FERPA)

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a 1974 federal law protecting the privacy of student educational records. FERPA safeguards student privacy by limiting who may access student records, specifying for what purpose they may access those records, and detailing what rules they must follow when accessing the data. 

Faculty and staff should be aware that content uploaded to Video on Demand that identifies students, or content that is contributed by students, constitutes an education record and that FERPA regulations apply to it. Those regulations require that the content be protected from disclosure without student consent. Disclosure in this context includes use outside of the class, such as posting student content openly on the Internet. 

Faculty and instructors who post original student work openly on the Internet may only do so with the students' permission or by providing the ability for individual students to opt out.

Accessibility Requirements

ASR (machine) captions will be automatically added to all newly uploaded content. By themselves, ASR captions do not meet the accessibility standards Cornell seeks to achieve, so media owners are responsible for editing the ASR captions to ensure accuracy.

Media Retention Policies

Beginning in 2026, Cornell’s vendor for the Video on Demand service will begin enforcing media retention restrictions on unwatched content.

Under the current terms and conditions, this means that:

• Media that is viewed at least once every 2 years will be retained indefinitely.
• Media that registers no plays for 2 years but has at least one play within the last 4 years will have all transcode flavors deleted, while retaining the original source media. (“Flavors” are versions of the video stored in the system to allow smoother streaming of the content at different resolutions and bandwidths. Removing these flavors can noticeably affect the media’s performance—and may prevent playback altogether.) Users can self-restore transcode flavors that have been deleted, but they must then register at least one play of the entry to prevent the transcode flavors from being re-deleted.
• Media entries that have received no plays for 4 years or more will be deleted. Media owners will be notified of the deletion and will have a 30-day grace period during which the media can be recovered from the Recycle Bin in their Video on Demand account. Media recovered from the Recycle Bin must register at least one play to prevent it from being re-deleted.

Playing a piece of media for at least ten (10) seconds is generally sufficient to register a “play” and reset the clock on these media retention enforcement policies.