Can YouTube videos be downloaded, re-edited and then displayed before an educational public event on campus?
Answer
To answer the big question, we actually need to answer three smaller questions first:
1.Can I use YouTube as a source for videos?
2. Can I download and repackage those videos?
3. Can the videos be displayed in a public space?
All three factors need to be looked at to determine if the use is allowable, or if permission should be sought. Also if you want to display content in a public space, make sure to use your best judgment, and find videos that are not themselves copyright violations.
Because you are finding and using videos from YouTube, we need to read the YouTube Terms of Use. Anyone who uploads videos to YouTube must abide by these terms of use.
In the Your Content and Conduct section of the Terms of Use states:
License to Other Users
You also grant each other user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to access your Content through the Service, and to use that Content, including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display, and perform it, only as enabled by a feature of the Service (such as video playback or embeds). For clarity, this license does not grant any rights or permissions for a user to make use of your Content independent of the Service.
The bolded statement does seem to give a user the right to display YouTube content, as long as it is done through the YouTube platform.
If that is the case, we can start to answer our three questions above:
1. Can I use YouTube as a source for videos?
Answer: Yes you can, as long as you do not circumvent any systems YouTube has in place. For example, downloading a video that does not have a download option in YouTube.
2. Can I download, recut, and repackage those videos?
Answer: Based on these terms, you may be able to download them, if YouTube has a mechanism that allows for the video to be downloaded. It also seems possible you can recut and repackage (i.e. make a derivative) as long as that can be done within the YouTube platform. However, if you the recutting and repackaging of the videos needs to be done with software outside the YouTube service, that might be a licensing violation because it is being done outside of the platform and possibly a copyright violation depending on the amount of the video used. So downloading if available is OK. Making changes to a downloaded video without permission from the copyright owner or without a Creative Commons license might not be.
3. Can the videos be displayed in a public space?
Answer: Based on these terms it seems that as long as the display is done within the YouTube platform and the content of the video is not itself a copyright violation (i.e. the person who uploaded the video also created the content in the video or holds the copyright for the content).