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Home Use License and the
Public Church Showings of Christian Films
This web page is designed to help you understand the copyright law of home use license and the showing of Christian movies
in a public setting.
A number of movies are licensed for home use only. But, a home use license also allows what is written in the law as "face to face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational institution". Therefore, we believe this to allow a DVD that is home use only to be shown in a classroom type setting (like Sunday school).
For 50 years, the Christian film industry had survived from churches and groups renting and showing films, mainly in the congregation. But, in the 1990's, the rental of films virtually came to a complete halt. Now, we are seeing a revived interest as more churches recognize the power of films and are showing movies to their congregation again.
The public showing of movies by churches is a helpful thing for two main reasons. One: the church needs to recognize the power of films. Hollywood movies have saturated the land and influenced cultures greatly. Therefore, movies shown in congregations with a message for Jesus can be even more powerful. Secondly, there is a great lack of Christ-centered films and one of the reasons is lack of funding to produce new films. A Hollywood film has the box office in theaters to gain income. Most Christian movies don't play in theaters and therefore a public rental helps the producer gain back costs from production.
On our website, we have listed with each film the information needed for home and public use showings. Some films are already licensed for non-profit public use and require no additional license or fee. Others require a fee either directly from the producer or an organization called CVLI.
If you have any further questions regarding this, please feel free to contact us.
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