Your youth group holds a weekend lock-in. Several in the group bring their favorite videos. Around 2:00 a.m. they watch "Free Willy."

You use a short clip from "The Mission" to illustrate your message at the annual missions conference.

Your church operates a daycare center. Every Thursday afternoon one of your workers rents a video from Blockbuster for the children to watch.

You could be breaking the law.

All of these are illegal uses of video cassettes if your church does not have a license for public performance video viewing. Purchasing or renting a video does not carry with it the right to publicly exhibit that video. For that, you need a separate license.

Unintentional infringement

It was just a few years ago that churches began to take music copyrights seriously. Now, as more and more churches use multimedia, it's essential to know the laws. We tend to fast-forward through the "FBI Warning" at the beginning of videos, but pre-recorded videos, whether purchased or rented, are ...