Because most of our worship is online and is streamed via Social Media sites, we have to be very careful about not infringing the copyright of the people who spent hours creating the music and the graphical material which we use.

 

Copyright (or author's right) is a legal term used to describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music, paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases, advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.

 

Fortunately, many people have generously made their music available online for inclusion in our videos either on a copyright-free basis or via CCLI (Christian Copyright Licensing International) a private company which licenses musical and video works for use in worship and, in return for a single annual fee which is based on how many people attend services, gives you the right to use the works which artists have registered with them. For an additional fee, you can include these in streamed services. ECO is registered with CCLI and therefore benefits from being able to access a vast library of religious music.

 

Other organisations and artists make their music freely available for use in worship.

 

The same is true of video footage which is either freely available online or can be purchased from libraries.

 

ECO holds a large library of copyright-free music which it has purchased, as well as music which is freely available to download without copyright. We are grateful to the composer Alan Simmons who especially wrote the opening music which we use for the opening titles of many of our services and granted us the exclusive license to use it. We also gratefully acknowledge Rev Canon Sue Wallace (who performs as Abbess) for giving us permission to use her sacred music within our services.

 

Some of our music has been originated by the ECO Team by combining and editing sound sequences provided by Duende Sounds. Under the terms of the license by which they were sourced from Duende, these are the copyright of ECO and may not be used in any other context without prior written permission.

 

During the Covid crisis, some organisations have made their work available free of charge to support online worship. For example, in 2020 the BBC announced that online services could make free use of recordings of Songs of Praise hymns providing this was not done for profit. Similarly, the Taize organisation have made their own recordings available.

 

Finally, some artists have placed music on YouTube and permit you to use it on condition that they can monetise any adverts run during the video.

 

All the graphics that we use were either originated by us or come from public domain sources or from graphics libraries to which we subscribe. For example, the Copyright symbol at the top of this page was obtained from the Pixabay image libary.

 

If you think that we have infringed your copyright, please let us know at contact@ourchurch.fr