Part 2
OK. So finally I’m getting around to an explanation of the previous post.
My current - I’d use the word dialemma, but it’s not. It’s more a trilemma or quintalemma or something - is (somewhat) about copyright. The laws are fairly complex as what we’re doing here is basically a live theatre venue, church, theatre company, video, dance and creative arts training and production centre, bible-school, and a few other things too. The people who were supposed to be taking care of the whole copyright thing have been doing a really poor - or at least misled - job for a number of years now, either that or else no-one ever bothered even trying to figure out what taking care of it really meant.
We’re slowly getting there, I think, I hope. But currently I find myself saying more and more “no, sorry, you can’t do that, that’s illegal”, without really having much viable alternative to offer.
And that sucks.
Part of the thing is what is copyright law really saying?
“This is mine, for me, and not for you, or for God. It’s mine. Shove off.”
Which people object to, obviously. Thus an argument often raised is
“Well, the artist who made this is a Christian, and so wants to glorify God, right, and we’re trying to glorify Him too by using it, so we’re fine to copy and edit it…”
Well. If the artist wanted you to just use it for whatever you want without checking with them first, then they wouldn’t have put “Copyright 2003. For personal home use only. All rights Reserved” on it…
It gets worse with the internet.
“Hey, my pastor just sent me this really cool video I want to show in the programme tomorrow!”
“Well. The music backing to it I recognise, it’s a song by Hillsong UK, and there is no copyright notice anywhere in the clip at all, one of those opening still-pictures you can see has part of a copyright label in the corner, but half cropped out, so we can safely assume that many of the images are taken uncredited from the internet, and even the one you can half read it’s web address isn’t being credited properly. That interview clip with the kids outside the theatre is almost certainly just filmed without their parents consent, and you want to show this clip to paying public?”
“But they played it at my church last week!”
“So?”
“So it must be alright!”
“Wrong.”
“What can we do instead?”
Indeed.
So now the whole issue of making our own material. Last week a couple of the programme staff went out with a camera and asked a bunch of random people on the street questions, then asked me how to edit it (for 2 days later). So I kind of pulled stuff together, found an old recording of a couple on-board musicians jamming which kind of fit.
The end result wasn’t great. In any sense. It shouldn’t even have passed my own quality control.
Read more...