Copyright, Creativity and Content

Written by Yvon Prehn

Today it’s so easy to copy anything—words, images, whatever. A click of the mouse and we’ve got it on our hard drive. But just because it’s easy to grab or copy something doesn’t mean you can do anything you want to with it. Though copying content without paying for it has received the most press in the music industry, it is just as illegal for Christians to copy and use images and words without permission.

Ignorance is understandable, but no excuse.
It’s easy to be hard on teenagers for copying music illegally, but like the Bible story reminds us, we need to make sure we don’t have a beam in our own eye while we are trying to remove a splinter from the eye of our brother. For some examples of this, imagine these situations:

1. A youth director copies some clip art from a Web site without paying for it. He uses it to create a really neat youth ministry t-shirt. People like it so much they ask for more for their friends and so the youth group starts selling them to make money for the youth ministry.

2. The outreach pastor asks a graphic designer at church for her ideas on what would make a good yellow pages ad. The graphic designer creates what she thinks is just a fun, brainstorming design on her computer and gives it to the pastor. He never gets it back to her or thanks her, but she doesn’t think anymore about it until a few months later she sees her ad, with only slight modifications in the yellow pages.

3. A pastor likes a cartoon in the newspaper so much he feels it would be perfect to use to illustrate his sermon on Sunday, so he tears it out, takes it to church and has his secretary scan a copy of it for him to use in his Sunday PowerPoint presentation which he will later upload to the church Web site.
 
What is wrong with each of these situations, and similar ones to them, that happen frequently at churches?

What is wrong is that in each of these situations, the church leader involved violated the copyright of the original creator of the clipart, the advertisement and the cartoon. That means they stole and used something that did not belong to them. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Neither is the fact that they did it for a church or non-profit group.

Though the chances of the creator of any of these products actually doing something about the theft of their creations, especially to a church, is small, it still is not the right thing to do.

To copy clipart, ideas, or cartoons that you like and have not legally paid for and understand your specifics rights to is illegal. In addition, if the creator of the works does find out and decides to do something about it, in recent years the courts have come down much harder on the violators of copyright. Fines and now felony convictions are possible with multiple cases of copyright infringement, especially where the copyrighted material was then sold for profit. You might think that’s far-fetched for a church, but that’s what was going on in the youth group clip art example above or what might happen, for example, when you copy a song you like and include it on an “Encouragement” CD that your women’s ministry sells as a fund-raiser. 
 
Don’t be ignorant, educate yourself. 
So that you don’t get caught using something in a church newsletter, PowerPoint presentation, yellow pages ad, Web site that you shouldn’t, here are some guidelines:

1. Don’t assume that all images and text on Web sites, or that volunteers create for your church, are free for you to use in any way you want to. Treat fellow professionals with as much respect as you want shown to you.

2. Make sure you pay for what you use, or at least offer to. In the situation of free-lancers or creative professionals in the church, a written agreement of what you will use for what purposes is always a good idea. Don’t just assume you can use any sketch or idea for free that might be mentioned anymore than you’d expect to have the member of your church who is a doctor diagnose your back problems on the patio after church for free.

3. For clip art and photo disks—read the small print. In using images, photographs, etc. from either clip art or photos you buy, people usually just skip the terms of use small print. Don’t if you want to use it responsibly.

4. “Copyright free” does not mean that you are granted unlimited usage. Read carefully exactly what rights you get for what price.

5. Always ask. Ask (there are always e-mail addresses) with clip art if it can be used for a product that may be sold. That’s where it often changes from free use, to a fee being charged and a release form needed. Sometimes it is waived for a church but always ask.

6. Frequency counts. For some things, such as photographs, find out if you have purchased unlimited use or one time use. Photographs are very tricky and just because you can scan or copy them today doesn’t mean it’s legal to buy one copy and then reproduce them yourself.

7. Consult additional resources and perhaps even get legal advice if your church is doing a lot of creative work. One excellent resource is: Getting Permission: How to License & Clear Copyrighted Materials Online & Off by Attorney Richard Stim. This book contains information and forms for getting permission to use text, photographs, artwork, music, various releases, and license agreements. It is available from www.nolo.com. This is only one book of many books on the topic of copyright protection available from this site. The Nolo Press site is an excellent site for many legal questions and resources for your church and creative life.

For more information and helpful links, go to www.copyright.gov. Yes, it is a pain to check out all of this and sometimes you might not be able to use an image you really, really like without paying for it. But we are to be people of integrity and the extra care and time we take to make sure our images are legal and used correctly is pleasing to the Lord.

Article originally published in Christian Computing Magazine. For a list of Yvon Prehn’s upcoming seminars, please go to www.cyberservants.org.