Web Streaming And Music And CCLI.

[waynehoskins]

We're just now starting to think about how to get service video up on the web. "Tape delay" of the sermon is a piece of cake from a copyright perspective, at least as far as I understand: our pastor preaches straight from The Bible, no video clips or whatnot. Well, video clip maybe once a year, sometimes even twice.

I haven't seen anything definitive, however, directly concerning streaming (real-time true streaming) the entire church service on the web. Particularly the song service.

My gut instinct is that streaming the whole service (which amounts to broadcasting) including copyrighted music is a no-no, even under CCLI, without doing all the legwork about arranging permissions from the copyright holders and paying royalties to the Big Three. Am I right, or does it fall more nearly under the provisions of a physical videotape/DVD recording? (then again, that "15% church size" thing gets us 'cause the "audience" is theoretically unlimited...)

It is mighty comforting, though, to read that we can make a videotape/DVD for shut-ins, nursery folks, people who want to send one to family, and so on, and still be legit (presuming the works are covered by CCLI). For some reason I thought that wasn't allowed, but it's there clear as crystal.

Streaming the entire service (with music) on the interweb is, from a copyright perspective, roughly equivalent to television broadcasting, as best I can tell, and I'm not planning on doing it .. but I would like some more definitive input.

[Gene]

From the CCLI website:

Question / Issue
Does the Church Copyright License cover music we want to use on our church website?

Answer / Solution
No. By its nature, a website is accessible far beyond the boundaries of a local church congregation. Since the Church Copyright License includes no provisions for broadcast or streaming rights, the use of copyrighted music or lyrics on a website is not covered by the Church Copyright License. If you would like to include music on your church's website, you need to secure the proper performance licenses.

[waynehoskins]

Well, there you go, that's pretty definitive.

Should've read their FAQs myself .. but I'm glad to see a black-and-white answer. Even happier that I expected it .. glad I wasn't all gung-ho to do it and then found out we can't.

[Nathan J]

Check out the WorshipCast license -- I believe that's designed to cover many of those areas.

[waynehoskins]

Looks cool. It's a little (budget-wise) beyond what we really need right now, but I'll keep it in mind for future. The first step is getting sermon video up; if there's enough demand for whole-service streaming later, we can drive off that bridge when we get to it.

We've got sermon audio going back a year and a half or so (and if I were really ambitious I could go back through the archives to get back to the beginning of 2006). Now we've got cameras and sermon video is the logical next step. If a few people want video of the whole thing, I have a couple of crazy ideas: either burn some DVDs, or even (possibly: uber crazy idea that I'd really need to run through CCLI) putting service video on the server, behind apache auth, and having a very small number of discrete logins for particular people .. in that instance, using the server as a means of controlled distribution rather than broadcasting.

Just a crazy idea I came up with just now, and for investigation farther down the road. We have a couple of people who have moved away but listen to the sermons regularly; putting video behind the vault door might be a handy way of delivering content to them without "posting" it for the general public.

But again, we'll drive off that bridge when we get to it.

[Gene]

Sermon videos as opposed to the whole service including music are OK, so that might be a good place to start.

[waynehoskins]

Yep. I probably should've explained that better at first .. I did in my head about an hour beforehand, but I didn't press the corresponding keys.

For sermon video there's an outfit here in Dallas that will host it for free, and so that's a quick fix for the bandwidth and hosting and archiving problem that we'd have to solve if it were an in-house job.

The streaming service was just one of those "I don't think we can, but I may as well check" things. A couple of guys at church have mentioned it recently as a cool thing to do, but I was pretty certain we couldn't do it under CCLI. But most of my CCLI research is now, gosh, seven years out of date and rusty, so I figured I'd check, and I didn't find anything definitive in the forum vault here.

If nothing else, it's good that we've answered it in the clear for other folks in the future.

Of course, it's probably also addressed in Tim's book, which I have, but it's at home and not at the church or the office, where I've been all day.

[mikeysames]

I found this kind of license available through churchca.com

It seems to cover the areas the CCLI does not.
Anyone else have any insight.

I think the free service that Wayne is referring to that will store and serve video for free is at truthcasting.com

[rdj561]

We use TruthCasting and can broadcast anything, as long as the music isn't copywritten. I posted a someone singing "My Redeemer Lives" from our Easter service, and they asked if I had purchased a WorshipCast license!

Unfortunately, spending $1000 a year for an occassional song was not in the cards, so I pulled the video.

I found it odd that we're a 501c3, are not selling a product, yet still needed a license to redistribute that song. I work for a non-commercial Christian radio station and we do not need to pay royalty fees to the artists we play, because we're not profiting from them... Kinda odd actually.

But for what it's worth, TruthCasting is a very good service, with audio matching video perfectly - plus a very clear image. It's not like YouTube or Tangle at all.

[cmchamp]

You've got to play by the rules of the Copyright Laws.
Wayne, even though you may be providing the service to restricted log in, password access based streaming, if that access is outside your physical property, it may still be considered "Broadcast" under the current FCC, Digital Rights Act and Copyright Law. Be careful.

[WORDpictures]

I checked into getting rights to a specific commonly used contemporary Christian song - and the rights holder (a significant company) expressly disallowed "ALL" web usage of the song - though I could have pursued a license for a DVD or television broadcast of the same. So... the outlook isn't good from a legal standpoint.

Yes, Truthcasting is a free service for this - no bandwidth fees.

[waynehoskins]

And in the past year (I forgot I asked this a year ago, even) we've gone with Truthcasting for hosting, but I'm actually working on taking our primary video-hosting in-house. It'll still be up there on Truthcasting, but the idea is we'll tell people to go to our website for sermon video. The mechanics of that are worked out, and it just takes doing it.

I haven't thought much more about full-service streaming. In fact, since I'm significantly down tech crew from this time last year, I've got way bigger fish to fry, like "do we or don't we have a director for Sunday?" (and the answer now is consistently "probably no"). Fabulous, wonderful, just what I needed.

If I start thinking about web streaming stuff again, I'll keep you cats posted.