The church and copyleft
Posted by Chris T. on Thursday, February 21st, 2008
Jeffrey Tucker over at NLM has mentioned a new choral work that has been released under the Free Art License and offers a great argument for why church musicians among others should release their work under less restrictive licenses than the standard American copyright. I've written about this before and agree wholeheartedly.
Copyright is, frankly, a mess in this country. And the entertainment lobby has done everything it can to mess things up around the world, so that the intellectual property of Disney from the 1920s is as "safe" from creative reuse and reappropriation in Thailand as it is in the US — this despite the fact that Disney has made a fortune doing just that kind of creative reappropriation with others' intellectual property.
Church folks should think seriously about opting out of this system. This Free Art license seems like it bears looking at — Creative Commons is another good option. Try to use the most permissive license you can. I've seen many use the "no derivative works" flag, and I fear that sort of misses the point. It leaves these works locked up in copyright long after you will be dead, even under that CC license. The more permissive licenses will help liturgists, musicians, and others use your work decades from now, when it may be difficult to track you or your estate down! (This goes doubly for us Independent Catholic folks, who are almost never doing work inside a publishing house that will survive us.)
So check out copyleft. It's good for the Church. 
Filed in Chant, Liturgy, The Church |
2 Responses to “The church and copyleft”
I have republished an order of prayer based on the Suffrages in LBW/ELW, without permission. Just today, prompted by someone else, I have requested permission. We’ll see if I get it . . .
Chris –
Good luck. I hope they’re reasonable — and they may well be. The sad reality is, that many don’t even bother starting up such projects because they assume (whether they’re right or wrong) that they can’t get permission. So copyright has a dampening effect on just the kind of work the Church could use in calling its people to faithful prayer practices.