As Christians we are directed to obey the laws of the land as long as it does not cross our religious beliefs:

Rom 13:1-5 ~ Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.  Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.   For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:  For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.  Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

1Pe 2:13-14 ~ Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.

But what does this cover?  Everything!  Yes, speeding is breaking the law, if they can cite you for your action then it is breaking the law.  Yes, that governs copyright laws also, which applies to movies, music, books and computer software!  It is the restriction by copyright of computer software that brought this issue to my mind many years ago and conviction set in.  Friends would get one of the latest games or perhaps a new develop tool (I have spent a good portion of my life as a software developer) and it was an easy thing to get a copy and use it without paying for it.  Well, however you try to candy coat it, the fact does not change that by our copyright laws it is stealing!

What about music?  Yes, it is just the same, when you copy a song for a friend, if it is copyrighted, it is illegal and is stealing not “Sharing”.  If you have received music you know is copyrighted, then you have either received stolen goods or are in the state of stealing them yourself.

I know it is easy to say, “ah, that is trivial, it doesn’t matter”.  Go back and read those Scriptures above again.  You as a Christian are bound by the laws of the land, it does not say some of them or just the ones you perceive to be important.  Guess what, it applies to taxes too!  This year I noticed I had been doing my taxes wrong for years and will take a hit this year to correct that error.  Oh, I could just ignore them and no one would be the wiser, but God does not miss anything nor does my heart that convicts me.  It is something that has to be fixed.

Okay, let us say that everyone agrees and we know we are not to break those laws.  How far does copyrights apply?  From what I can see,  if you purchase a accompaniment sound track your are purchasing a license to the music and lyrics to perform the song in public.  Without this license, you would be obligated to receive permission to use the lyrics or music.

Take Me In – The Road to nowhere

In the previous post "The Band Petra - Where to Begin?" I mentioned about a song called “Take me in” that my wife wanted to sing at church.  The first step was to find an accompaniment track giving us both the license and music for the song.  Since the song was published a long time ago, there are none available that I could find.

The next step of this journey was to track down the copyright owner and obtain a license to sing this song to our small congregation.  Since the band has retired, I located a place on the Internet where it credited Bob Hartman as the author and so I contacted him.  He graciously replied and directed me to another link:

http://www.growingchristians.org/mfgc/rock/TakeMeIn.html

That gave me a copyright supposedly in 1986 to a “Glory Alleluia Music” company.  I had little success at tracking down that company, but it looks like they may have evolved into, merged with, was bought by or somehow became Tempo Music Publications, Inc.:

http://www.christianguitar.org/csong16203/Kutless-Take-Me-In

Okay, now it is time to track them down.  I then discovered that many years ago they sold off all their copyrights to Lorenz Corporation:

http://www.tempomusic.com/about.htm

After looking into the Lorenz Corporation, I could find no reference to the song but requests to license music must be submitted in writing and to all IIRC, at least 14 days to process.  No mention of costs or anything else.

At this point, my journey down the copyright rabbit hole ends.  All this just to sing a simple song in church.  For what reason, what causes the problem here?  Copyright on Christian media.  I understand that people want to make a living.  I understand that they want to receive from their work and I am not against that, but I sure wish there were more Christians out there that would generate quality public domain work or at least cut deals where after a few years of profit making, their copyrights would expire so they would be available for use.

While it does appear that the song might be covered by the Christian Copyright Licensing Inc, which I am not sure if our congregation has, it still seems overly binding for what is supposed to be the Kingdom of God, the Body of the Christ.

So, at the end of the journey, the song will not be sung, the blessing that may have been there is lost and all do to a never ending copyright.  Yes, I say never ended as the copyright expiration dates always get moved back and have for decades due to Mickey Mouse.  Huh?  Our government seem to extend the copyright durations every time Mickey Mouse’s copyright is about to expire.  At this point it appears we will never have copyrighted material expire and move to the public domain.

Copyrights and the Christian World

As I mentioned before, I can understand people wanting to make a living.  But in our Christian world there should be difference with the secular world.  As an example, look at the copyrights and royalties on Bible translations.  What is the motivation of making a translation, making money?  Translations based on profit?  Hmm..

Look at all the sermons around Christendom where ministers claim “God gave me this message to share with your” and then follow that up with “Order the complete set now for only…” often costing more for the media than secular for profit, educational material of the same size.  And usually always included the dreaded Copyright.  If what they said was true shouldn’t the copyright read “© Copyright 2009 by Almighty God, All Rights To Freely Copy”?  There are some ministries that do give their resources away freely or at the most at cost and I commend them, but often they are still tagged with a copyright notices, restricting others from using the work or substantial portions of the work.

Conclusion

We are tired of these copyright issues and will spend more of our time keeping up with sites such as:

http://www.sharesong.org/

They try to get you to purchase the CCLI for your church, but it is not a requirement, at least when people upload their songs they are on the terms that they can be used with or without a CLLI.

As everyone knows, I keep calling for an awakening, we need one drastically in the music industry also!