Mikey linked to this arti­cle by his fel­low Tasweigian — Will — who wrote a thought­ful piece on a Chris­t­ian approach to Copy­right that I agree with most of.

Except for the bit where he makes a dis­tinc­tion between tan­gi­ble and intan­gi­ble assets. Which I have a prob­lem with. We have turned the intan­gi­ble into a com­mod­ity. Ideas are worth money. Enter­tain­ment is big busi­ness. Com­pa­nies rise and fall on the back of pro­tect­ing ideas. Cre­ativ­ity is worth money. And while Will asserts that bor­row­ing someone’s story does not con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of com­mand­ment num­ber eight — I would sug­gest that there are ways that it can.

Ser­mon illus­tra­tions are a grey area. I’ve never had one pinched. But I know peo­ple who have. I think there’s enough out there with­out steal­ing people’s real life anec­dotes and pre­sent­ing them as your own. There’s a place for appro­pri­ate attribution.

But, as I’ve indi­cated in dis­cus­sions both here, and else­where, I sym­pa­thise with Will’s position.

“IP restric­tions in gen­eral are bad for Chris­t­ian procla­ma­tion. I lis­ten, watch and read widely as I pre­pare my ser­mons. I have been known to, ahem, “bor­row” an illus­tra­tion or two. I have been known to read quotes from books in order to make a point. God help us if these sources were to stand on their IP rights. ”

And I find this state­ment interesting…

“The Bib­li­cal prac­tice of remu­ner­a­tion for gospel work is pri­mar­ily one of patron­age — a stipend, gift, dona­tion so that you may be free to give of your­self, not a wage so that you can earn your keep. ”

It has impli­ca­tions for the way we approach our own rights in the con­text of our ministry.

Andrew Katay has been post­ing about the nature of remu­ner­a­tion for min­istry.

I came to the con­clu­sion else­where (in one of my old posts linked below) that the church has a respon­si­bil­ity to pay its finan­cial dues to those whose work it uses, and work­ers have the respon­si­bil­ity to live out the gospel and serve the body with their gifts.

I think when we want to use some­one else’s IP, even when they have sac­ri­fied their right to that IP, we should be attribut­ing it to them. While I believe all exer­cises of spir­i­tual gifts to be spir­i­tu­ally inspired I think acknowl­edg­ing the work and con­tri­bu­tion of the per­son is the right thing to do. So I’d draw the line at steal­ing per­sonal ser­mon illus­tra­tions with­out attri­bu­tion to the per­son. If it’s a good illus­tra­tion it should cope with the attri­bu­tion with­out falling over in a pile of steam­ing awfulness.

Copy­right is a com­plex mix of ethics, law, and the­ol­ogy. Here are some great resources for think­ing through the issue…

Simone is a Chris­t­ian song­writer of repute — she posted about copy­right, song writ­ing, and chang­ing song lyrics. She got lots of com­ments. And she posted a fol­low up.

Com­mu­ni­cate Jesus has a bunch of great posts about copy­right for churches, and a post for Chris­t­ian cre­atives to con­sider how they can gen­er­ously give of their abil­i­ties. Steve from Com­mu­ni­cate Jesus also points out that it’s ille­gal to screen YouTube videos in church with­out a CCLI video license (CVLI) or con­sent from the video’s pro­ducer.

This PDF is a handy guide to copy­right for churches.

And here are my pre­vi­ous thoughts on the mat­ter…

Hope­fully some of these links will prove help­ful for any­one tra­vers­ing the murky waters of copy­right and IP in the church.

Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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