[cc-community] CC licenses and recording rights for music

jonathon jonathon.blake at gmail.com
Tue Dec 18 03:19:50 EST 2007


On Dec 18, 2007 2:07 AM, Denver Gingerich  wrote:

>Since the church is not making a public performance of the music
(perhaps it is; see below)

Over the last decade, the trend is to consider a congregation singing
a hymn as a "public performance' for which royalties are to be paid.

> I think the assumption I'm making is that a church's performance of a song does not count as a "public performance".  See the above discussion.

If there is a performance by a group other than the general
congregation, then it is a public performance, no ifs, ands, or buts.
 (EG: A church choir is a performance.  A soloist is a performance.)
The only gray area might be whether or not the congregation, as a
whole, singing a hymn is a "public performance".

> Licensing companies tend to not address the case where music is sung in church but no lyrics or music are copied suggesting they don't believe it is enforceable.

Different collecting societies collect royalties for different things.
* Harris Fox Agency handles mechanical recording rights;
* ASCAP, BMI, SESAC handle performing rights;
*  CCLI handles hardcopy copying rights for some Christian groups;
This is by no means all of the collecting societies that one might
have to deal with.

Thus far, ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI are making a good business out of
forcing clubs to abandon live music.  Once they have completely killed
the live music nightclub scene, they will atack churches with a
vengance.

For a church to not have to pay royalties the only material that can
be legally used is "public domain". (For technical legal reasons, none
of the CC licenses allow the creator of the work to waive collection
of royalty payments.)

###

One possibility would be to find a couple of hymnals that were printed
prior to 1920, and reprint them using Lulu.com.   The downside is that
they will wholesale for at least US$30.00 per copy, or roughly four
times the current retail cost of pew hymnals. :(    [From browsing
iUniverse and CafePress, it looks like they retail price would be
about the same.]

xan

jonathon


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