About copyrighted materials found on SingPraises.net

SingPraises.net is created and maintained independently by Samuel Bradshaw. It is not an official web site of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, nor is it endorsed by the Church.

I believe in "obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law" (as in the 12th Article of Faith). In accordance with that principle, SingPraises.net strives to obey all copyright laws in the United States, where the site is hosted. However, not everything on the site was created by me. Here are some notes about how I use copyrighted materials:

  • Lists and indexes. This website is primarily composed of lists, indexes, and tables of contents. Creating and publishing an index of a copyrighted work does not violate the copyright of the original work.
  • Materials from the Church website. Throughout the site you will find images, sheet music, audio recordings, and other copyrighted materials that the Church makes available online. These materials are not hosted at SingPraises.net, but instead are linked from their original URLs. Linking to materials on another site does not violate copyright. Based on my understanding of legal precedent, this includes hotlinking, inline linking, or embedding legally-hosted materials using HTML <img>, <svg>, <canvas>, <iframe>, <audio>, and <video> tags.
  • Scanned images from the Internet Archive, Google Books, and similar websites. Many hymnbooks that are now in the public domain (published before 1929, or published before 1964 and not renewed) have been scanned and made available for free online. I link to many public domain book cover images and page scans from these websites. Public domain books are not protected by copyright.
  • Scanned hymnbook pages. Full scans of a few public domain hymnbooks are hosted here at SingPraises.net. As with the public domain books on other websites, these books are not protected by copyright.
  • Book cover images. Various pages on this site display book covers. Some of these book covers are copyrighted. All book covers that are still under copyright are displayed and linked only as low-resolution thumbnails. "Fair use" protection is claimed for these thumbnails.
  • First lines of texts and tunes. Throughout the site, the first lines of texts and/or tunes may be displayed, including for copyrighted songs. Because of their context (text or tune identification) and length (short excerpts), fair use protection is claimed.
  • Songs texts. This site includes the text/lyrics of several songs. Some are in public domain (originally published before 1929, or published before 1964 and not renewed). Others are included with permission – for example, lyrics of hymns, children's songs, and youth songs owned by the Church (Permissions.ChurchofJesusChrist.org, L19-15571). Copyrighted lyrics for which I have not sought permission are used in two places: a tool that compares differences in a text between versions, and search result snippets. In both cases, only necessary portions are displayed, and “fair use” protection is claimed based on precedents such as Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.
  • YouTube videos. YouTube makes it easy to embed thumbnail images and videos that are hosted on their site. As mentioned above, linking to copyrighted materials hosted on another site is not a copyright violation. In some cases, people upload videos and music that they don't own to YouTube, without copyright permission. I try to only link to videos that appear to have been legally uploaded.
  • Wikipedia snippets. Wikipedia articles are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and the GNU Free Documentation License. Both of these licenses allow text to be copied from Wikipedia as long as attribution is given. Any pages on this site that quote from a Wikipedia article include a link to see the full article.

Using materials from SingPraises.net

Everyone is welcome to use the information at SingPraises.net. Information can be copied and shared with friends and family, or used in personal projects. I've been blessed with a lot of help and support from family, friends, and acquaintances as I've worked on my site, and I hope that everyone will be able to benefit from the information here.

The information on SingPraises.net represents thousands of hours of volunteer work – gathering information, visiting libraries and bookstores, organizing surveys, transcribing, cross-referencing, and figuring out how to present data. Because SingPraises.net is run as a personal site, travel to local libraries, purchasing occasional hymnbooks, and commissioning scans is paid for out-of-pocket. If you find my site useful in your projects, I'd appreciate a link back to SingPraises.net.

If you'd like to use SingPraises.net data commercially, send me an email. I'd love to help, and give your project a shout-out below.

Apps and sites that use SingPraises.net data