Is it wrong?

Copyright infringement use to be very clear cut. If you wanted to own a song you had to buy a record. Very few people could reproduce them so they tended to not be copied. Eventually tapes and VHS came around along with tape and VHS recorders. Lots of people made mix tapes and copied tapes for friends, but it was still limited. You usually had to own an original to copy because unless you had really good equipment each copy of a copy became worse. CDs and computers made it possible to make copies of copies without diminishing returns, but you typically had to know the people until the internet made it possible to transfer files across the world.

So the question is simply this. Where does it become illegal to use media. As a church we pay several copyright fees. One to put music on a screen and to play the music publicly, another to play CDs and videos and another that lets us use copyrighted material in our original content. Techinally we pay someone who has arranged rights to several, but not all, owners of copyright music and videos. This meens that I may or may not have the right to use given music in the background of a video I make for my youth.

It could take hours of research to figure out if I can use 30 seconds of a song. This is simply a waste of my time so I fall back on the thought that if nothign else I can run with "fair use."

I understand the industry is concered about money, but I think they will be able to live on what they are making without making me feel guilty over wondering if I am allowed to use a clip that I may or may not have already paid for permission to use when most of the kids in my Youth have downloaded the song already.

I think someone needs to come up with a better solution. If I am paing money out of my budget for several copyright whatevers they should pretty well garuntee that every label has given permission for the use we are paying for.