Simple Copyright Solutions
Posted on November 23, 2009
I get more questions about copyright and the legal use of copyrighted materials in church than any other topic. Sadly, most of those conversations start with music pastor or tech director looking for a loophole, or trying to justify a copyright violation. So we walk through that conversation, but it ends up here.
Honoring copyright law, in both letter and spirit is simply the right thing to do. I wrote more about that on TechnoPraxis again this morning.
There is no question that copyright in the US is complicated. The law is dense. Fair use is a limited, and confusing area that often does not apply to the activities of a church. Churches, other than when performing or exhibiting religious works during religious services, enjoy no blanket exemption from the law.
Add to that the fact that we have three separate and unrelated performance rights organizations: ASCAP, SESAC and BMI. That makes licensing and staying legal more complicated.
Fortunately, there are some relatively simple solutions available to churches. Here’s a quick rundown of some of them. This is also the place that I should remind you that I’m not an attorney, and don’t play one on TV. If you have specific questions about your situation, go find a lawyer that specializes in intellectual property law.
CCLI
Church Copyright Licensing International offers the most well known blanket license. It allows you to do the following for all songs in their library:
- Print songs and lyrics in programs and bulletins.
- Create songsheets or songbooks for your congregation.
- Project lyrics for congregational singing.
- Create your own arrangements of covered songs, if no published version is available.
- Record your service and distribute those recordings, subject to restrictions on number of copies and price. NOTE: This does not cover creating a music CD of your worship band, whether it was done during a worship service or not.
CCLI does NOT allow you to copy music, to translate music, or rent or lend songbooks made under the license to other groups.
CVLI
Church Video Licensing International offers a blanket license that allows you to playback movies or other videos from covered producers in church or Sunday school gatherings. There are some restrictions, including one that says you MAY NOT promote a specific title. In other words, you can promote a movie night, but you can’t invite your congregation to a showing of a specific title under this license.
Christian Copyright Solutions – AKA Copyright Solvers has several great products.
They offer WorshipCast, which is a blanket license that covers web streaming of the music in your worship service. Much less hassle than getting individual licenses and reporting to three agencies. You can acquire this license pretty easily online directly from the performance rights organizations. You will, however, have to do reports for the music you use to all three. The ability to file one report with the blanket is well worth the minimal extra cost.It only covers streaming, however. It does NOT cover downloads of .mp3′s or other formats.
They also offer PerformMusic, which is a blanket performance license for playback of music outside of worship services. Yes, it is required! The Willow Creek Creek Association offers a similar blanket license, that I believe is simply a part of your association membership. Great benefit for members. UPDATE: WCA no longer offers this directly. Instead, they have a relationship with Christian Copyright Solutions, and members of WCA get some significant discounts!
Copyright Solvers also has a great new service called VideoReady. If you are a video producer, looking to do music videos with contemporary tunes, or funeral tributes with music backgrounds, this is the service for you. They offer sync licenses that are very affordable.
This list probably (almost certainly) isn’t exhaustive. If you know of another cool copyright tool available online, pass it on in the comments!
The bottom line is this. It’s possible to be legal about things. More than ever, it’s pretty affordable thanks to these new services. There’s really no reason not to stay copyright clean!
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14 Responses to “Simple Copyright Solutions”
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Hi Kirk. Thanks for the mention. We actually had a webinar on all of the various blanket licenses available to churches and folks can download a copy of the presentation here:
http://bit.ly/5ylIZH
What do you do, say, for a funeral where people put a tribute “slide show” together for the deceased and it has accompanying songs with it? Never thought of that before. Does it also accompany people performing songs for a wedding, which isn’t necessarily a “church service?”
Hey Don. There are a couple of issues here.
First, you should be aware that the funeral home is very likely charging the family for this service. They’re charging them a LOT. I am also particularly fond of the vile practice of them putting a logo (or even an ad) on the end of the loop. It’s perfectly OK to ask them to make you one that doesn’t include the logos, and to ask them to get it to you well in advance of the service so you can double check playback.
You might even want to think about making this service available through the tech ministry of your church.
Be sure that you can do it on relatively short notice, and make sure you have someone who likes to scan and crop lots of pictures. You’ll need to set a limit of, say, 50 pictures, or the family will show up with 374. They should put them in order, too.
Second, some funeral homes use royalty free music for these presentations. Many use a packaged video editing product with the music included. These are OK for playback. Others use popular music. Unless they’ve gone to the trouble to license the music (both sync and master use) they’re violating copyright.
You would also need a performance license to play tunes that are not of a “religious nature” back as part of these presentations. Copyright Solvers has a great solution for that, as I mentioned. So does the Willow Creek Association.
And as for a wedding done in a church, again, lots of variables. If it’s a “religious work” played back in the wedding… maybe OK. If it’s not a religious work, a license is needed. Again, check out WCA or Copyright Solvers!
Hope that’s helpful!
Hi
Thanks for this post. Do you know any sources for this issues outside US? It maybe even more complicated here in EU.
Thanks for making the confusing copyright laws and their solutions understandable!
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Great info! I’ve been studying (C) for the church for a couple years and you’ve hit the main points and resources. A change however – WCA no longer offers Performance licensing with their membership.
Hi Don –
Kirk is providing great information here and we are all appreciative.
I would like to correct one small error in Kirk’s response to you. The criteria for being able to use music under the church exemption is that the music be played during an actual religious service. The music does not have to be of a religious nature in order to be covered under this exemption.
So to be clear:
You DO NOT need a performance license in order to play any music during a religious service, regardless of whether or not the music is religious in nature.
You DO need a performance license whenever you are preforming music outside of a religious service, regardless of whether or not the music is religious in nature.
If you have any questions about performance licenses for churches and ministries, visit http://www.CopyrightSolver.com. We are here to help!
Have to disagree with CopyrightSolver above… just a bit here.
The law specifically uses the phrase “works of a religious nature, in the course of services at a place of worship or other religious assembly.”
It’s a two part test, as I read it. In order for the exemption to apply, the work must be “of a religous nature” and be played “in the course of a service.” What constitutes a “work of a religious nature” would be up for debate in front of a jury, which is where we certainly do NOT want to be!
The last time I actually paid to have an attorney do the research, there was nothing on-point to whether a “non-religous” work would be covered under the exemption.
If you can point us to anything on-point with regard to a “non-religious” work being covered by the exemption, I’d love to hear about it.
We’re probably actually arguing a moot point for the vast majority of churches out there. Most will have need for a blanket like you offer, and therefore would be covered whether the exemption applies or not! At less than $200 per year, there’s really no reason NOT to have the license in place.
Thanks for chiming in. You guys provide a great service.
The language in the religious service exemption has been a tricky question for several years and has resulted in a lot of confusion and debate on the part of churches, copyright owners, administrators and attorneys. Our attorney researched this particular point this year and received the following statement from the U.S. Copyright Office counsel who forwarded House report on this section of the U.S. Copyright Law. The House report makes it very clear that the exemption musical works (not just of a religious nature) and dramatico-musical works of a religious nature.
Our attorney went to the US Copyright office and their counsel explained that the House Report is considered more authoritative since it was written a year later than the Senate’s and closer to the date of enactment.
The House Report text reads:
“The exemption in clause (3) of section 110 covers performances of nondramatic literary or musical work, and also performances of “dramatico-musical works of a religious nature.”
Basically, the other text version was written in a confusing manner and with a confusing comma.
The PERFORMmusic license is worth it just not to have to keep up with this stuff
Thanks for the kind words and for getting the word out!
Very helpful. Also, I just discovered and updated this post to include the information that WCA is no longer offering a blanket license. Instead, they’re working with you folks AND getting their members a nice little discount. Thanks for all the work you do.
kdl
Premium blogpost, great looking blog, added it to my favs.
Interesting… I’m pondering the question of what projector to use in our venue. The issue of LCD v.s. DLP tech is an especially troubling question for me.
Any Ideas or recent posts on this topic?
I think the issue of DLP vs. LCD really solves itself once you answer other basic questions. Let me work on a post on what factors matter in projector selection and I’ll try to get that up next week!