Copyright:  Fair Use and Church Music

Fair use is a provision of the copyright law that allows for reproduction of copyrighted material under very limited circumstances including: for comment, for criticism, and for parody. But be warned that fair use almost never applies to the church, to worship, to choir music in concert in church, to copyrighted hymns in worship, instrumental or vocal or choral music used in the church, or to any use of music in the church, including worship, rehearsal, Sunday school, day care, youth groups, retreats, congregational worship, concerts, devotions, meetings, mission projects — almost any situation in the church is not covered by fair use.

The fair use provision of the copyright law almost exclusively applies to academic and educational settings and does not include claims of academic and educational settings within the church. Fair use may be applied to certain conditions of music use in a church-related academic institution, such as Southern Methodist University, but it can not be applied to the copying of music for worship or concert performance by the SMU choir in chapel worship or for any use within a local congregation.

Even in academic and educational institutions, there are restrictions on fair use. Of the four factors applied in judging whether a particular use constitutes fair use or not, the two most critical are:

1. How much is copied? A better case can be made for fair use when very little is copied than when large portions or all of the original is used. Complete works, or even performable portions of works, are likely to be judged as outside fair use. In any case, no more than ten percent of a work or ten percent of a performable unit of a work can be copied under fair use.
2. What is the economic impact of your claimed fair use on the copyright owner? Does it deny the owner potential income? If so, it likely is not fair use.

But remember, even these two above conditions cannot be applied to church use because fair use is limited to academic and educational use — NOT use in worship, rehearsal for worship, church concerts, and so on. Never forget that the educational exemptions written into Section 110(1) of the Federal Copyright Act, Public Law 95-553, Title 17 of the United States Code are quite narrowly defined and apply to face-to-face teaching situations in full-time, non-profit academic institutions only.

For good information on fair use and its application in academic and educational comment, criticism, and parody, see the Stanford University Web site: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/index.html

As always in such matters, never rely on information you read on websites or in e-mail messages, including this one. Consult a competent, informed, legal expert.