A member asks:
Am I correct in assuming that couple’s cannot live stream their marriage ceremony given music copyright issues?
So there’s a few issues to address in this one short question.
The first is responsibility. If you as the celebrant are not responsible for the stream, if it isn’t being broadcast by your equipment or on your website or streaming services, then its not your responsibility and not your worry.
Moving on to the issue of whether you can or can’t stream. There’s a chance – and only a chance – that if a live stream contains copyright material and the streaming provider deems the live stream to be in breach of a copyright owner, then it’s possible that the streaming provider might shut the stream down. There are live streaming providers you can use that are less trigger happy on this kind of scenario, but the fact remains that if you do not have the permission and right to broadcast a recorded work, then you are breaching copyright.
So how I get around this issue is really easy: I don’t broadcast or live stream the music. My live streams only broadcast the audio that my microphone hears, and being a professional grade microphone, it only picks up what is in front of it. There may be background music which can be heard quietly, but that isn’t enough to warrant a brach of copyright nor trigger an automatic detection of copyright protection bots.
Just live stream the celebrant’s microphone and you’re fine.
