On Jun 25, 2008, at 7:50 PM, Lora Crighton wrote:
I'm helping out with the music at my church while we
are between music directors, and the priest has
suggested using a hymn that is not in the book we
currently use. This means that we would need to print
at least the words - the music as well would be nice -
for the congregation. Would we need to get anyone's
permission for this, and how would we go about it if
we do? I tried googling, but gave up after I kept
finding US sites, because I know their rules are
different.
An idle glance through the Canadian Copyright Act
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42/index.html
(check under Exceptions)
shows "fair dealing" exceptions including private study, library/
archive copies and for review, but no mention of churches. This is
not the same thing as US "fair use" as Canadian "fair dealing"
appears to be slightly more restrictive. There is also a mention of
non-profit, but I don't know if churches fall under that for the
purposes of copyright, otherwise how would hymnal publishers stay in
business?
I am not a lawyer, so anything I say cannot be taken as a legal
opinion (engineers and doctors get the same monopoly!) but a call to
the publisher would certainly clear up any uncertainty. It is quite
possible that they will ask how many copies, what book, what for, and
then say, ahh, we can't really GIVE you permission, but if that's as
far as it goes, just go ahead and we won't pursue you. (I have had
that response before. I have also had, "no way, under no
circumstances whatsoever, we don't care that it is permanently out of
print so we won't be making money on it ever again, we don't care if
you offer to send us a cheque, we simply do not permit photocopying
of our materials under any circumstances.")
Christopher
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