Quoting General Authorities

If you quote a living general authority, where do you request permission? Does the church own the copyright or does the individual speaker?

Also, you do need to submit separate requests to the church for each quoted item or for each project?

At one point, I think I had a link to the Church’s copyright information but I’ve googled all morning and can’t find it now. I did find THIS, which talks about using music.

The Church is subject to the copyright laws of the U.S. You can find the copyright law HERE. Specifically, you need to know what constitutes FAIR USE. Since copyright law is written in legal-speak, it’s sometimes very difficult to interpret. That’s why you can find several books that help interpret it. I have a much used copy of THIS ONE.

When quoting General Authorities, copyright ownership depends on your source. Sometimes it’s the Church who owns the copyright and sometimes it’s the General Authority. But either way, you start at the same place, which is The Church Copyrights and Permissions Office.* Contact them and ask for specifics on how to request permissions.

*50 East North Temple Street, Salt Lake City, Utah 84150; 801-240-2190

3 thoughts on “Quoting General Authorities”

  1. What if you have two lines from a familiar Primary song, but you change parts of the lines? Do you still need to get permission?

  2. Rebecca, I don’t know the answer to that. I’d say to be on the safe side, yes. But depending on how you use it, it might be covered under Fair Use and you could use it with all the citation info on the copyright page.

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