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

Denver Gingerich denver at ossguy.com
Tue Dec 18 13:53:47 EST 2007


On Dec 18, 2007 12:19 AM, jonathon <jonathon.blake at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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 would be interested in hearing a bit more about this, particularly
examples (such as case law or new licenses of this type that have
recently become available) where this trend can be seen.

> > 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".

After doing some more research and finding a page dealing specifically
with copyright pertaining to churches [1], I see that there are
specific exemptions in US and Canadian law for public performances "of
a religious nature" or by a "religious organization" [2] [3].  I think
this makes the question of whether a church service is considered a
public performance a moot point.

I should have found this stuff earlier; it would have saved us some
needless discussion here.

> > 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.

Depending on what the church is doing, that's right.  The Willow Creek
Association has an interesting article on which licenses a church
might need [4].

> 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.

Given the exemptions discussed above, I don't think that will happen.

> For a church to not have to pay royalties the only material that can
> be legally used is "public domain".

Or music where artists have given explicit permission for royalty-free
copying.  There are several sites out there that host such music.
These include ShareSong.org and 4praise.com.  There are also personal
sites such as Larry Holder's that have CC-like licenses for hosted
music (see http://www.larryholdermusic.org/copyright.html).

There are also resources out there for public domain material.  For
those interested, I would highly suggest checking out the Open Hymnal
Project (http://openhymnal.org/) or HymnWiki
(http://www.hymnwiki.org/).

> (For technical legal reasons, none
> of the CC licenses allow the creator of the work to waive collection
> of royalty payments.)

Do you mean collection of royalty payments for recordings and public
performance?

> ###
>
> 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.]

Or print songs from some of the web sites listed above.  The person
running the Open Hymnal Project uses mainly songs from pre-1923
hymnals so they are guaranteed to be in the public domain in the
United States.

Denver


1. http://www.pastors.com/rwmt/article.asp?ArtID=10256
2. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Code/Title_17/Chapter_1/Section_110
- see subsection (3)
3. http://www.cb-cda.gc.ca/info/act-e.html#32.2 - see subsection (3)
4. http://www.willowcreek.com/wcanews/story.asp?id=WN06I22006


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