Renewals due for CVLI licenses

It is time to renew CVLI video licenses for 2010. Reminder letters have been sent to churches that carry this coverage. This provides copyright protection when your church, for example, shows movies to preschool or elementary children or uses video clips for sermon illustrations or in Sunday school. For more information about CVLI, contact Amelia Ballew in the Oklahoma Conference Department of Communications, 405-530-2075, aballew@okumc.org.

By David Wood and David Toliver, GNTV Media Ministry

Have you been to Disney World recently? If so, perhaps you noticed the company makes an extensive effort to protect its intellectual property. Copyright protection is used by Disney to keep you from freely distributing all those fabulous pictures they take of your family. There is a price to pay.

For churches, it can be a daunting task to understand even the basics of copyright law; how to properly use songs, videos, graphics, and photos; and how to distribute all these tools to your congregation.

Visual and audio aids certainly enhance worship services, youth groups’ activities, children’s ministries, and more. Whether your church’s musicians are performing a song or your church is using a professionally produced song or video, it is important that your efforts conform to copyright. There is a price to pay.

The use and distribution of most media is protected under copyright law. The price can be steep in cases of noncompliance.

Artists, writers, producers, and others who have roles in creating a media piece that is used have contracts to be paid for its use.

There’s a song in the air

Song lyrics are the most commonly licensed items for ministries. Yet, this also is the most commonly misused license.

• Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) offers licenses for song lyrics to nonprofit groups—such as your church—for about 200,000 songs. The license does not cover the copying of musical arrangements (i.e., sheet music). With a song lyrics license, the licensee may reproduce and distribute lyrics in a bulletin or on a screen, create songbooks, and record original performances of the music by the licensee’s musicians. You can learn more at the company’s Web site: http://www.ccli.com/.
• Playing copyrighted religious music in worship services is covered without a license. U.S. Copyright Law Section 110 [c] provides an exemption for performance and display of "works of a religious nature in a religious service."
• Any time music is played or performed in your facilities other than in a worship service, a performance license is required for non-religious music—such as James Taylor or George Strait singing on a CD. This includes concerts (non-ticketed), social and youth events, fundraisers, conferences, and music-on-hold. The three primary performance-rights organizations (ASCAP, SESAC, and BMI) have partnered with Christian Copyright Solutions to provide a flat-rate performance license for nonprofits to legally play music. To learn more: http://www.copyrightsolver.com/. 
• Internet streaming of copyrighted music, even if it is performed legally in worship, also is protected under copyright law and requires a license. For example, during a youth event your church’s praise band can legally play a song covered by a CCLI license, but it is illegal to stream that band’s performance on the Internet without a license. If your church plans to stream worship services over the Web, Christian Copyright Solutions also has a streaming license to allow you to include performances by your musicians.

Be aware that, even with this additional license, songs from CD or DVD cannot be legally included as part of your Webcast. To learn more: http://www.copyrightsolver.com/WorshipCastLicense.aspx.

What’s showing on the big screen?

Video clips are quickly becoming popular in worship. The use of copyrighted videos is also illegal without a proper license.

• Christian Video Licensing International (CVLI) offers an affordable license to cover the performance of video clips inside facilities owned by the licensee. This license does not cover any kind of reproduction or distribution (such as copies of worship services, Web streaming, and television broadcast).

The licensee may buy, rent, or borrow an original copy of the video clip for legal use. CVLI enables legal access to clips from thousands of movies, including those by Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone Pictures. To learn more: http://www.cvli.com/.

• The recording and duplication of worship services is important. People may be unable to attend a worship service; perhaps worshippers would like to see or hear it again. However, the legal use of copyrighted material in a worship service does not mean its use is legal in recording.

CDs and DVDs of original performances of copyrighted music may be legally distributed and are covered by the CCLI song lyrics license so long as the cost for the consumer does not exceed $4 per CD and $12 per DVD. Neither video nor audio clips from copyrighted performances (anything not produced by the licensee) are allowed to be included in such recordings for distribution.

Honoring the law

Each of these licenses stipulate what can and cannot be done under the license. Christian Copyright Solutions, CCLI, and CCVI all exist to help churches legally use copyrighted materials in their worship services.

Just like that disclaimer on the perfect picture book from your Disney vacation, visual and audio work is protected in how it can be used and distributed. As Christians, we have an obligation to protect the work of others and honor the laws that protect that work.

(GNTV Media Ministry is the multimedia vendor for the 2010 Oklahoma Annual Conference. The company has also been multimedia vendor for General Conferences. GNTV’s home office is in Macon, Ga. Web site: www.gntv.info )