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Christians and Copyright - Are we holding back the Gospel?
This article is meant to be a challenge, a wake up call, a plea, and a statement of a deeply held opinion.
Early in 2002 a well known international speaker hosted a conference at my home Church. Attendance at the conference came at a reasonable price that, judging by the attendance, would pay both the Church's expenses and pay for the speaker.
During a recess I was chatting with one of our Church members who had been instrumental in organising the event. I asked if the conference was being recorded (we have an audio recording facility and all services are recorded) and was told that it was being recorded, but that the organisation that the speaker belonged to retained the copyright on the recording. That left me with a sour taste in my mouth. The teaching, and the inspiration from the speaker was amazing. Teaching like that should be sent to all the corners of the world in order to fire up christians into building a Church of Biblical standards. But if I sent a recording to a friend or family member whom I thought could do with hearing the message I would be breaking the law. The law of copyright would prevent me from spreading a message that would enrich peoples' lives and help build God's Kingdom.
Today we have grown up with the notion
that copyright is the natural way of things and that it is wrong to
enjoy someone else's creation without compensating them in some way.
Copying a CD, book, or video without authorisation is against the
law, and has been for the duration of every human life on this
planet. But copyright is not part of natural law, nor is it part of
Biblical law. Copyright is a modern phenomenon that was invented as
part of the U.S. constitution. Copyright was invented in order to
"...promote the progress of science and the useful arts, by
securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive
right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The Constitution of the United
States Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8
It is important to understand this sentence. By fully understanding what this sentence means, it becomes clear that modern interpretations of copyright have turned it into "leverage all creations under our corporate banner to squeeze as much revenue as possible from them". (My paraphrase of current corporate attitudes toward copyright.) This attitude has led to, among other things, the Walt Disney Corporation lobbying for copyrights to be extended. Copyright now lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years (see Project Gutenberg at http://promo.net/pg/vol/pd.html). We seem to have forgotten what "for limited times" means. Disney profited greatly from copyrights expiring in using the works of Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book), Hans Christian Andersen (The Little Mermaid) and Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), but when the time came for the copyright to expire on Mickey Mouse they lobbied Congress to get copyrights extended so he could continue making money for them.
This kind of corporate greed has also infiltrated christian society. In 2002 a website named christianguitarnetwork.org was shut down. The website was in the business of providing a forum for fans of christian music to discuss their favourite bands and share playing techniques and guitar tabulature of their favourite songs. One argument goes that by sharing tabulature the website's readers were exposing each other to songs that they would otherwise have never heard about. This could mean an increase in CD and concert sales, but the record companies were having none of it. They argued that sharing tabulature was cutting into the sale of music books, and had the website closed down (Unfortunately the website where this news was broken and discussed is no longer available). Music that was written in order to glorify God and spread His Word was locked into the record companies' stranglehold and reduced to a corporate money-making machine.
There are many ways in which the Gospel is restricted, or at least hampered by restrictive copyright. Here are a few examples, please note that these are fictitious, but this kind of thing happens all the time.
I've just finished listening to Band X's new album. A friend of mine a few hundred miles away could really do with hearing one of the songs, it would help her out with current problems and enrich her walk with Christ. Unfortunately the copyright on the album prevents me from taking an MP3 copy of the song and emailing it to her, or even lending her the CD.
I'm a busker, and like to sprinkle some worship songs into my repertoire. Before I can do so I need to jump through hoops getting permission from the copyright holder. This kind of performance should be automatically allowed, since it communicates the gospel to the public, and also exposes them to music they would never otherwise hear. ("Hey, that's a good song. Who wrote it? Where can I get a CD?")
I'm compiling Bible study notes for an outreach we're running in a deprived area. The people don't have their own Bibles so we're reproducing whole chapters in the notes. Unfortunately we are forced to use the King James Version (which the unchurched may find difficult) because copyright prevents us from reproducing such large passages from modern translations.
"Freely you have received, freely give." Matthew 10:8
Many people who work full time for God do so purely by faith. Ministers are faithful that their congregations will tithe enough to support the Church expenses and their livelihoods. Missionaries often live not knowing from one week to the next how the bills are going to be paid. Yet christian "content providers" place their trust in a human law, and in doing so place a shackle on their creations that hamper them reaching the lost. A desire to make a profit from record/book/video sales is a barrier to using material to most effectively spread the gospel.
I honestly believe that hard working "content creators" would be able to live by faith, serving God and their fellow man, and reap the rewards - both spiritual and material - that many people have shown such a lifestyle can bring, without having to rely CCLI royalties. I believe that worship and spreading the Gospel should be freed by artists making CCLI obsolete.
If you are a full time christian artist then I would encourage you to seek ways to earn a living without restricting what others can do with your creations. Money can come in from concerts, seminars, teaching, and still come in from sales of books and albums. If christians were able to receive free copies of your work and had an easy way to send money to the artists by way of showing their appreciation then I am sure that the flow of income would continue (much like in the shareware model of distributing computer software - see http://learnbridge.com/sharedsr.htm for a detailed description of this process).
If you are an amateur christian artist working a day job, and being creative in your spare time then I would encourage you to share your creations freely, and not impede others from enjoying your work by placing it under a restrictive copyright.
Whether amateur or professional ask yourself this question. If there were no copyright laws would I have no incentive to create?
Charles Wesley did not need copyright protection, nor did Shakespeare, Homer or Isaac Newton.
For christians a love for God and a desire to express this love, and reach out to others are the primary reasons for writing poetry, music, books, painting inspirational pictures, dancing and expressing ourselves in any other way in which God has gifted us. Please don't restrict or hamper other peoples' enjoyment of your work, and the subsequent spreading of the Gospel for the sake of a little extra monetary income.
If you find yourself agreeing with a lot of what you have read here then you may be interested in some of the following resources.
The internet is a huge resource for any subject under the sun.
If you wish to share your praise and worship songs then freepraiseandworship.org is a great place for songwriters and worship leaders to benefit from each other's creativity.
If you are an artist (of any sort) and wish your work to be propagated freely then you should check out the GNU Art License which gives recipients the right to distribute and derive from your work, while still acknowledging you as the creator of the work.
If you are a musician then you may prefer the Open Audio License from the Electronic Frontier Foundation which, again, allows free distribution and derivation while properly acknowledging the work's originator.
Another license you may prefer is a derivation of the X11 license as contributed by Russ Newcomer. Where you see the word Content you can change it to "Recording", "Sheet Music", "Painting", "Article" or whatever is suitable for your creation.
|
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge,
to any person obtaining a copy of the licensed content and
any associated Auxilary Content(the "Content"),
to deal in the Content without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, sell,
publish, and/or distribute copies of the Content, and to
permit persons to whom the Content is furnished to do so,
provided that the above copyright notice(s) and this permission
notice appear in all copies of the Content and that both
the above copyright notice(s) and this permission notice appear in
supporting Content. |
Resource List
freepraiseandworship.org - http://freepraiseandworship.org
GNU Art License - http://www.gnuart.org
The GNU General Public License. This license, created for computer software, has inspired creators of other copyrightable works to think about how they can copyright their work, while still freely sharing with everyone else. You can read the license at http://www.gnu.org/licenses.html
Open Audio License - http://www.eff.org/IP/Open_licenses/20010421_eff_oal_1.0.html
Electronic Frontier Foundation - http://www.eff.org
Phil Ward is a worship leader and song writer and a member of Stirling Baptist Church in Scotland. Phil would love to hear any opinions you have on this subject especially from both amateur and professional artists. Email philward@bigfoot.com. This essay is available at http://www.bigfoot.com/~philward/writings.html. I will also publish some of the emails I receive on this subject at the same address with the author's permission. All emails received on this subject may be used to generate statistics regarding numbers of correspondents who agree/disagree with me.
I'd like to thank Russ Newcomer for reminding me to add alternative licensing and for contributing the X11 based license.
Copyright 2002 Philip Ward
Verbatim copying, translation and distribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty provided the copyright notice and this notice are preserved.
Since originally posting this article I've had a smattering of feedback. So far no-one has disagreed with me. Here's some of the feedback I've received.
From Henk Verhoeven:
I appreciated your article and thankyou for your passion.
Sergio Belkin has asked if he can translate the essay into Spanish. Of course you can Sergio. As soon as you provide a link to your translation I'll post it here.
Mike Sheeran sent me the following email which is copied here in its entirety.
Phil,
It is nearly midnight where I sit in Texas and I stumbled upon your site while researching the CCLI. I find myself agreeing with a lot of your conclusions.
But let me share another with you. I have had the impression that when a Christian singer, songwriter, etc uses the copyright law to make money for himself, he is in effect saying something like this, "Before you can use my song to pay tribute to God (from Whom I got the song to start with), you must first pay tribute to me in the form of royalties. Failure to do this will cause me to make your life miserable. The law is on my side."
In my humble opinion when someone gets in line ahead of God for tribute, that is nothing short of blasphemy. Christian artists can exempt churches from the stringent requirements of copyright if they so choose--but they stand to lose a lot of money so they usually don't. "You cannot serve God and mammon".
Consider the case of Rick Myers. He writes software for a living. He has authored a Bible study program he calls E-Sword and distributes it for free on his website, www.e-sword.net. He quotes Jesus' admonition, "Freely (without payment) you have received, so freely (without payment) give."
He has walked by faith. He recently needed a bigger server to accomodate all the visitors downloading his program. His needs have been met, sometimes miraculously. God always arrives on time.
His slogan is, "Eliminating Bible illiteracy--one download at a time".
One church I attended could not record their choir's performance of a recent musical because of--you guessed it--the copyright law.
It's one thing to protect what is called intillectual property. It's quite another to hold it hostage.
The Church is in trouble. It has lost its first love. Or maybe its first love has been replaced.
And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out with what.
I look forward to hearing from you.
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