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Post Info TOPIC: Stupid RIAA
WebGuy


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Stupid RIAA
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Our church has paid money to CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International) forever. This license allows us to reprint music lyrics for the services for things like putting lyrics in the bulletin handouts, on the projector, for the musicians, etc.

They have been chaninging they way that they want things reported which has our secretary all confused as to what/how we have to report usage. She has been asking me to help her figure out what it all means. She finally had to call them and ask them questions.

In the process of her talking to CCLI, she mentioned our live service internet broadcast. The lady told her that the CCLI doesn't cover that, we'd need a broadcast license to cover it and the lady gave her a link to a site that will help with the licensing.

Now, when I started streaming our church service I KNOW that the CCLI website said our CCLI license covered the broadcast our own "performance" of copyrighted music. I knew we couldn't broadcast copyrighted music played off a CD, etc, but I purposely searched and found where they said it was ok to broadcast our live music in the live service.

I looked again now and now their site says nothing about them covering the broadcast of live music.

So, not wanting to break the licensing laws, I checked into the pricing to allow us to broadcast our services. Its "only" $925/year.

Since we usually only have one or two, and many times no listeners, we won't be paying $925.00/year ($18.00/week) if no one (or only one or two people) are going to be listening.

Now our options are to stop broadcasting our service completely, or we'll have to just make sure we only broadcast the sermon portion of the service. Our service gets changed around a lot to where the sermon is placed. It can vary 20 minutes or so depending on what all we have for music/specials, etc. I'm not sure how many listeners will want to sit and listen to silience while waiting for the sermon to start. If we only broadcast the sermon, I can see us losing the few listeners we have now anyway.

I talked to the pastor about it and he is considering our options so we can decide if we're going to continue with the live broadcast.

Stupid licensing. no.gif




-- Edited by WebGuy at 13:46, 2008-10-15

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MzHartz


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I'm beginning to hate anything that involves the word "licensing." I'm beginning to think it's a synonym for greed. Not only on the musical front either, I've been dealing with a lot of logo licensing issues at work.

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JD The Jazz Doctor


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no.gif

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confuzzed


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They suck.

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Jeremy Riggs


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That is such bullcrap.

So you'd be paying about $9 - $18 bucks per person to tune in for an hour a week (1 or 2 people).

How is that fair? How is you broadcasting that music hurting the music industry? It's total BS.

If your pastor is really worried about it and needs a week or two to figure out what he's going to do you guys could probably stream the hour on Sunday mornings on FFR until you decide on a permanent solution. No ones usually tuned in on Sunday mornings anyway.

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Ruby


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That it horrible! Would they actually know you were doing this though if you did not follow through?

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WebGuy


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I think the only way they would know would be to listen to get a list of which songs we "illegally streamed", and the chance of us getting caught are very slim. But, I still won't do it for two reasons:

1. If we did get caught, I certainly wouldn't want the church getting fined over this.

2. Its not good for us a a church to knowingly make a choice to break the law, even if the law is ridiculous.

They are not just picking on us. I knew we couldn't legally broadcast any copyrighted music we played from a cd before, after, or during the service, but my understanding was that it was ok to broadcast our own live performance of the songs. Since I started broadcasting our service, that has either changed, or been clarified that we can't even do that now.



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Ruby


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I knew you would not knowingly break the law. I meant to say would they have 'caught' you before you asked?

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WebGuy


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Oh, I suppose they could have eventually caught us. Its probably not likely, but possible.



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Dylan


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Is there an attorney in town that can help navigate through the agreement Web?

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WebGuy


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I don't think there's any agreement to make. You can pay the license fees or not. If you don't pay and get caught, then you get fined.



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Dylan


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If it was listed in the agreement you were working under where you could perform songs and now it isnt, I think I would inquire if you are grandfathered under the old agreement or are at least covered for the rest of the year under the Christian licensing.

Either way, I agree...non payment isnt an option. cry

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garougal


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I'm sorry Web, that stinks. Here you are trying to do  something for people, and greedy regulations get in the way. cry

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WebGuy


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garougal wrote:

I'm sorry Web, that stinks. Here you are trying to do  something for people, and greedy regulations get in the way. cry



Thats what is bugging me too. In our case, NO ONE is going to record our "performance" to listen to in place of the original, professional, recording artist. We are not that good. If anything, someone listening would be more willing to hear a song we just did and think "wow, that was a neat song, I would like to buy a copy of that from someone who does it well".

 

Dylan wrote:

If it was listed in the agreement you were working under where you could perform songs and now it isnt, I think I would inquire if you are grandfathered under the old agreement or are at least covered for the rest of the year under the Christian licensing.



Oh, I see what you mean now . . . the agreement with CCLI. I don't feel like broadcasting was really part of their agreement, I think it was more of a listing of what a church could and couldn't do. I just remember it saying that we could broadcast our performance of songs, but didn't read it that our license through them allowed us to do that . . . more that it was just legal (at that time) if we wanted to do that.





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Mad Mema


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It is unfortunate, Web. Even if it is only a couple of lives you touch with your broadcast, that is still a couple of lives being touched. Dumb law.

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MM

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WebGuy


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Yeah, it is.

We can still broadcast the sermon, but turning the stream on just as the sermon starts and shutting it off right when its over just won't be the same experience as it was to send out the entire service.



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