Copyright

[Milestoneworship]

What are your thoughts on copyrighting worship music? I'm thinking about pursuing copyright for some of my original worship songs, but I feel that this might limit their possibility for service to the church. Do any of you have teh same reservations?

[Stevie Nature]

As I understand it, a copyright is how song writers make money for the songs they've written. Don't muzzle the ox while it treads the grain, the laborer is worth of his wages. If you write a song that is helpful to the church there's nothing wrong with being compensated for it. I mean, a lot of people on this forum are already being compensated for their ministry to the church. If there's nothing wrong with that (and there isn't) then there should be nothing wrong for being paid for ministering to believers in other churches through your music.

As far as limiting usefulness to the church I don't see how. As I understand it, as long as you cite the copyright info a church can use it with no problem.

[Darryn]

If your goal is to bless as many people with the music you wrote as you can, then I would say that copyrighting it is you best bet. Having a copyright does not mean that it can not be distributed for free. Copyrighting music is always a good idea.

To go farther, if you license that song with a CCLI license then you may actually gain some income for your work. Stevie brings up a good point there. Many worship leaders are already making there income from "blessing the church". So does the pastor, and staff, and so on.

[twc_admin]

I'm all for the copyright .. it gives you the freedom to control the licensing and rights. If you want, you can give those rights away, specify your own "rights settings" using the creative commons licensing ... but if you don't protect the song, then you stand the chance of losing any right to control how it's used.

I believe it becomes a stewardship issue as well.

I'm a published writer, as are several others on the list, and I'd be happy to talk to you more about it, or even discuss professional publishing through our company if you'd like.

[worshiptrench]

You need to copyright it merely for artist content integrity...so no one can take your theologically accurate yet artistic lyrics and tweak them into heretical mumbo jumbo.

Also, so that no idiot "in the music industry" will hack the melody or lyrics just enough to make it "their own hit."

You can always release the rights and let others use it for free. Kind of like a leash on a pitbull, sure you might not want to stop him from mauling a poodle but if you need to you can yank back on the choke collar.

[russhutto]

A few things to think about:

If you are on staff at a church and you use “office” time to create “creative works” then technically the song belongs to the church.

If you write the song on your own time, it belongs to you.

Most people don’t even realize this. Most churches/employees aren’t aware of this either and don’t enforce it. But it’s there.

“Section 201(b) of the Copyright Act provides that ‘in the case of a work made for hire, the employer or other person for whom the work was prepared is considered the author… and, unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them, owns all of the rights comprised in the copyright.’ ” (Quote taken from “Writing on the Clock” in Worship Leader/October 2007)

Anyways, just thought I’d add that to the discussion as well, since a lot of us might actually use “office” hours to create works (songs) we might use in worship. According to the law, unless there is a specific agreement that those songs belong to you the songwriter, the songs you create during “work time” belong to the church.

Not necessarily a problem, but it might be a good answer to those songwriters who are facing the questions posed in the original post. If you don’t want your songs to have YOUR name attached to them then just write them on “church” time and the church owns them. Problem solved.

Another thought, I see nothing wrong with names being attached to creative works, sermons, etc. Most all of the books of the new testament have the name of the author within the first few verses. Not that that means they intentionally meant to get any financial compensation or anything from it, they probably didn’t, but they wanted those who received those letters to know who wrote them. No worries.

Also, if you look at the majority of the Psalms they are attributed either to David, Moses, Solomon, Ethan, Heman, Asaph, or the Sons of Korah. Again, not necessarily pushing financial compensation, but just that revealed authorship doesn’t seem to coincide with vanity.

Also, in searching this topic, I think it’s funny that Heman (He-Man) was actually a Psalmist, who'da thunk?

"...By the Power of Grayskull!!..."

[twc_admin]

Russ,
Thanks for posting this - I'd not yet read that article by Susan in WL Mag ... and we are addressing these issues at SSCC right now in regards to my making some albums or songs "on the clock", and how it affects others, like the Pastor writing a book (that could potentially come sermons, etc) or even the Tech guys creating visual arts that could be resold on SermonSpice, etc.

[worshiptrench]

You also have to be careful that a Pastor does NOT use non-profit equipment (video editor compt, cameras, etc.) or church staff during work hours or after hours on church equipment to do something that they will profit from (video for a conference that they will receive an honorarium at from speaking that they will keep). The IRS is going after guys and churches who do this because they are blurring the non-profit status of their church. I'll post more legal code as I find it.