Help: Worship music, copyrights, CCLI

Intended audience - If you do anything with worship music, you need to know the legal guidelines for handling such copyrighted material. This document is for you. This is cut from an email by dpark in the summer of 2003.

Samuel Chang wrote:

I guess I was just a little bit lost on the whole worship music thingy. I own a copy of OIL music (CCLI #673412) and made a few copies from that to distribute during worship yesterday for JCF. We did collect the music afterwards (though I'm not sure if that was necessary), but I didn't know exactly what was "legal" and what wasn't. I talked to Phil about it a bit, but I think we agreed that you would know best about this.

Am I allowed to distribute music for worship (as opposed to projector)? Should I include the CCLI number on each page? I guess I don't really know the details of all this that well.

Some references

• http://www.ccli.com/Visitors/FAQ.cfm

• /mit/mitacf/documents/ccli-email (copied below)

Some specific comments on your situation

From what I know, I think "OIL" is some sort of conference that was held a few years ago (or maybe it's held regularly) and the songbook was kind of a byproduct of it. In any case, CCLI numbers belong to and are paid by organizations, so 673412 belongs to some church or something out there, not the book. I'm pretty certain it wasn't legal for them to distribute those books, and as for us using them, the only thing that makes it illegal is the fact that they have someone else's number printed on them. Perhaps it all works out in the end because we are using them for our own ministry purposes and we are paying license holders, but the correct thing to do is relabel them with our numbers (the easiest way to do that is just to use the book as a guide, type them in to our repository and reprint them as our own sheets/books) because we are not an extension of that unknown church's ministry. I wouldn't bring JCF worship to a halt over this (see my last note at the bottom of the email), but I would do it as soon as reasonably possible.

Now since it's JCF and all unofficial and stuff, it doesn't have to be MIT IVCF's CCLI numbers, but I do think it should be MIT-something's CCLI numbers, where "something" is a campus group represented in JCF's gatherings.

Distributed printed matter should be recollected and kept with leaders/worship people of the license-holding organization or destroyed. Actually if we were an organization that owned a building that were the equivalent of a "church building", all printed matter (books, overheads, song sheets) are required to stay in the building when not in use. Only because we are campus ministries that don't have a building are we allowed to just keep them with leaders.

But yes, you are allowed to print things as an alternative to projecting. If you want to use ACF songbooks for JCF worship purposes, just print them off athena.

General guidelines

CCLI is a clearinghouse-type organization that makes thigns much easier for us. If it weren't for CCLI, we would have to arrange individual contracts with every song writer out there from Redman to Doerkson to Zschech et al... MIT IVCF pays a yearly fee of $156 for a class B license (organizations from 100-199 in size). CCLI pays royalties to song writers based on calculations of how often songs are used. CCLI basically provides us legal legitimacy in using copyrighted material as long as we stay within their guidelines. Outside of the guidelines we lose legal protection provided by CCLI. What we're allowed to do:

• we're allowed to photocopy/print things as song sheets, books, overheads, or electronically project things. we can incorporate songs into things like bulletins (many churches do this) for mass distribution when we meet for worship.

• we can use printed/projected matter for:

  1. our fellowship coming together to worship
  2. our worship team practicing for #1
  3. a small group meeting in someone's room
  4. retreats, and things where our organization is worshipping away from our usual place
  5. basically, things that have to do with "our fellowship" and "worship". It does not cover "individuals in our fellowship" or "personal use". Ask exec whether an activity can be considered an "ACF" activity or not. Or ask other MIT/IVCF execs whether it can be considered "BCF" or "UCF" or "GCF" activities.

• only songs covered by CCLI are covered by our license. This covers almost all worship/praise/hymn/etc type songs, and often doesn't cover non-worship songs by Christian artists.

• printed/projected matter are required to contain author, title, copyright year and label, and our ccli number. this does mean that we shouldn't use other people's overheads, and they aren't supposed to use ours, etc.

• all this copyright stuff does not apply to public domain songs (typically, songs written 50+ years ago unless some company kept renewing the copyright)

• copyright laws do not say anything about us actually singing/using songs, only about the printed/projected words and musical recordings. Anyone can sing any worship song if they know it by heart. CCLI holding organizations like us can distribute paper or project overheads to assist congregations in singing songs they don't have memorized.

• as for musical recordings, CCLI covers the words/music of the song, but does not cover copyrights of the recording. So it is completely legal for us to record, copy, and distribute a worship or performance time done by people we know, as long as the people involved agree to it. (basically, the people who made the recording are giving up their copy rights to us). We can even charge money for each copy. [note, this is why it's legal for Cross Products as a CCLI-holding organization to perform and sell recordings of worship songs. Xprods have to make separate arrangements though for non-CCLI-covered songs.] It is not legal for us to copy, say, Michael W. Smith's rendition of the same song, w/o setting up a contract w/his producers. Now some artists actually have a policy of freely distributing certain studio-produced tracks or live recordings, but that varies on the artist

• note: CCLI seems to have a "in good faith" kind of policy in that, as long as you're trying to abide by these things, but it's just taking some time to get it done, they'd look over it. The example they use is that if all your overheads don't have the right CCLI number, you should eventually get them all right, but you don't have to do it right away. Along these lines, I don't really mind if someone brings in a "foreign" (wrong CCLI number, etc) song sheet/book/overhead as long as it doesn't get used much and it gets entered correctly to our repository soon.

From: "CCLI Customer Support" < support - ccli com >
To: < dpark - mit edu >
References: <63509EE43E4ED4119D9500105A27787B0AB152@guitar.ccli.com>
Subject: Re: CCLI 
Date: Mon, 9 Oct 2000 08:01:22 -0700

FW: CCLI Dear Danny,

Thank you for your inquiry. If a license holding organization such as a 
campus ministry has made up songbooks we ask that these songbook be 
collected after the meetings rather than be taken home for personal use. 
Ideally they would be held by a leader of the group.

As to your question regarding practicing for a congregational meeting. 
If the copies that you have made comply with the CCLI guidelines then 
you may use these to practice to assist the congregation in worship. 
This does not apply to practicing for a special, solo, or performance.

Copies that are made under a specific church's Church Copyright License 
may be used for the direct ministries of that church, this includes home 
meetings, youth gatherings, children's classes, etc..

I appreciate your desire to comply with the copyright law as well as the 
guidelines of the CCLI license and I hope I was able to clarify the 
coverage that is provided with that license. If you need any further 
assistance please feel free to write back (be sure to include your 
church license number) or call Customer Service at 1-800-234-2446.

Sincerely,

Sarah
Customer Service

  -----Original Message-----
  From: Danny Park
  Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 7:45 PM
  To: Lynette Malmin
  Subject: Re: CCLI


  Oh we're already registered with a church license...

  One point of clarification then, in the case of organizations that do not have
  church buildings (like, for example, the dozens of campus parachurch
  ministries at my school that have ccli #'s but no physical buildings), what is
  the policy for the songbooks? 

  Some more questions:  is there any legal provision at all for praise
  leaders/teams who need to practice musically on other days of the week in
  preparation for the worship service?  It isn't quite congregational worship
  though it is a form of worship, the purpose is more for musical preparation
  for the full-sized worship service.  And what about for small groups / cell
  groups / bible studies--- it isn't the entire church, but a subset of it,
  meeting at a separate time, usually in a different location (in people's
  homes) but definetly a part of the church's ministry.  Can printed
  songbooks, lead sheets, overheads, etc be used there?

  The reason I'm asking all these questions is because I simply want to know
  what we have the freedom to do legally and what we should do differently and
  in which areas we should be strict and exercise more integrity.  But there
  seems to be a lot of gray area that I'm trying to get a better sense of.

  -Danny

  > Mr Park,
  > Thank you for your inquiry.  If you have the CCLI license, you may make &
  > use song booklets for your congregational worship. These must remain in the
  > churches possession. They are not to be distributed or to leave the church
  > building. I have sent an application & fee schedule. You may view our web
  > site for song titles under the Song Select program.
  > I can be reached from 7am-4pm PST at 1-800-234-2446 ext. 318.
  >
  > Sincerely,
  >
  > Lynette Malmin
  > License Representative