Setting License Details for Copyright Management

Many older songs and hymns are in the public domain, and you can use these freely. But all newer songs will be covered by copyright, and you need the permission of all of the copyright owners (there may be more than one owner) in order to use the lyrics for presentation purposes or to print them on to a song sheet.

Gaining permission directly from the owners is possible, but is usually impractical for most songs. For this reason, intermediary organisations will sell you a "license" which allows you to use any of the songs that are covered by that license. This license will usually require you to tell the license provider what songs you have used by reporting this to them - see the section on Managing your activity for Copyright purposes for more information.

When setting up SlideGen you need to provide details about such a license, if you have one. This is so that presentations and song sheets which are created by SlideGen can display the correct license information on those songs which are under copyright and are covered by the license.

To set up your license details, from the main window go to the Setup menu and select Options. You will then see the Setup Options dialog as shown below.

Under "Copyright Settings" first select what type of license you have - either "CCLI" (i.e. from Christian Copyright Licensing International) or "Other" for any other license provider. SlideGen has some specific handling for CCLI licenses, namely:

a different Copyright Report layout is used by default, which renames the "Project" category to the "Digital" category as per current CCLI terminology
various other windows will refer to the "CCLI Song Number" instead of "Copyright Code"
lyrics that are covered by CCLI, and contained within External Folders, will become available for use (e.g. in the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal)

Next enter your entity name (i.e. the entity that purchased the license, e.g. the name of your church) in the License Owner field. This will show on some reports.

Then set the details of your license in the "License Information" field - e.g. your license number. Your license provider may have some specific wording that you should use as per your license terms and conditions. This wording appears on all presentation slides created by SlideGen, and on all word sheets.

You can also set the start of your Reporting year, if applicable. This is only used if you select the option "First time used per reporting year" for one of the three reporting categories when generating a Copyright Report.

The example below shows the details for a "Church Copyright License" from CCLI.