Any Ideas or recent posts on this topic?

kdl

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!

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.

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!

This post was mentioned on Twitter by ifeelgod: New Church Tech Matters post: Simple Copyright Solutions http://ipmzh.th8.us ~ the legal use of copyrighted… http://bit.ly/07HwT4i...