If you show videos at your church,
conference office, Sunday school class, day care center, etc., under the Federal
Copyright Act you must have a video license.
If you rent or lend your facility to other groups (a Boy Scout troop, AA,
an Irish language class, etc.) who show videos you must have a video
license.
This applies to non-profit as well as for-profit organizations, whether
you charge admission or not, whether you show a short 2-minute clip or an entire
2-hour movie, and whether you are showing the video to 2 people or 200.
You must have a video license. Buying
or renting a video does not give you the right to publicly exhibit that video.
Pre-recorded videos are for home/private use only, which by law is a
“normal circle of family and its social acquaintances.”
Violation of the Federal Copyright Act constitutes copyright infringement
subjecting you to fines of at least $500 for each illegal showing.
An exception to the
licensing rules would be videos produced by the United Methodist Church.
These tapes are meant to be viewed by groups.
However, we have a large selection of videos in our library and the
majority of tapes are not produced by the United Methodist Church.
Also, buying a video from EcuFilm or a similar distributor does not
guarantee that the video is produced by the United Methodist Church.
All churches should have a video
license and UMCom has made it much easier to get one.
Good News! United Methodist Communications to Broker Video Licenses
Video
licenses are available to United Methodist churches at
the fees in the table below. The
cost of a video license is based on average worship attendance, and licenses
will
be offered
through an umbrella plan. This means churches can join together as one entity*
to purchase their video license. For
example, cooperative parishes, yoked parishes, multi-point charges, or
congregations which are, in some way, formally linked can get one video license.
UMCom
offers the licenses. They can be obtained by
calling the toll free customer service line
at 1-888-346-3862.
The
fee schedule is as follows:
Ave. Worship
Annual Fee
1-99.............................. $50
100-199........................ $90
200-499...................... $180
500-999......................
$250
1000-1499.................. $350
1500-2999.................. $475
3000+......................... $600
*For
questions about what constitutes an “entity” call the free customer service
line at 1-888-346-3862
Rocky Mountain Conference of
the United Methodist Church
6110 Greenwood Plaza Blvd.
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
303-733-3736 ext 100
1-800-536-3736 ext 100
Netta@rmcumc.com