Harry Potter at Home: Temporary Open Licence for Teachers

J.K. Rowling and her publishers are keen to support the splendid efforts of teachers who are working hard to provide home study for young people prevented from attending school because of the COVID-19 virus.

Jo and her literary agency, The Blair Partnership, recognise the importance of sharing story time and reading aloud in times of adversity, and so will be temporarily relaxing the licences usually required for teachers who want to record themselves reading the Harry Potter stories aloud, for viewing by their pupils in their home environments to create a virtual classroom setting.

If you are a teacher and would like to share the magic of Harry Potter in this way, please follow the guidelines below:

• Virtual Story time or classroom read-aloud videos in which one of the Harry Potter 1-7 books is read aloud and the book cover is displayed, may be created and posted to schools’ secure networks or closed educational platforms such as Google Classroom, Schoology, Edmodo and Discovery Education, in order to replicate the read-aloud book experience that would otherwise be available to educators in the classroom.
• These story time and classroom read-aloud videos may be hosted on the educational platform and/or school secure network until the end of the current (2019/20) school year in your territory or until 31 July 2020 (whichever is earlier), after which they should be permanently deleted from the educational platform and/or secure network.
• The videos featuring the readings (or clips from these) should not be posted on YouTube or any social platform or used for any commercial purpose.
• Please do not amend or abridge the text of any of the Harry Potter books when reading the stories in the video recordings, if possible.
• Please don’t share full videos on social but we encourage you to share links to the videos or video previews (no longer than 30 seconds) on your social channels to raise awareness.

Reporting requirements

We ask that you please notify The Blair Partnership via email (addressed to info@theblairpartnership.com) when you post a story time or read-aloud video, providing the following information:

• Name and location of the school
• Which Harry Potter book being read and approximate length of reading (e.g. one chapter, 25 pages, etc.)
• Name and email for the individual responsible for the reading
• The school network or educational platform on which the video or live event is posted or held

Please also send an email to info@theblairpartnership.com to confirm you have taken down and deleted the video(s) once the current school year has ended (or earlier if applicable)

Thanks in advance for following these guidelines and continuing to respect J.K. Rowling’s copyright and intellectual property!