ICEL policy on proposed Order of Mass texts

Those of you who have followed the controversy with ICEL's copyright/royalty policies will be interested to know that we now have a solution. ICEL has agreed to not charge any royalties on free downloads of music, providing the source is acknowledged. That is very very great news.

In effect, this puts ICEL's texts in the category of a creative commons, non-commercial attribution license. This means that the English-speaking Church can look forward to free music in the future, at long last. This will mean so much to financially strapped parishes and cathedrals. It means that when the new texts are promulgated, they won't have to spend many thousands of dollars more simply to have music to sing. This is a wonderful thing, and much credit goes to ICEL and to the Bishops with whom they worked on agreeing to this solution.

There is still the matter of final approval, however. The texts are still not finally ready for release, and it might even be years before they are. Until that happens, ICEL has requested that the music available here be taken down until all publishers are given the go ahead to make music available in all forms. They will be made available again when that announcement is made.

In the meantime, we are considering a solution that would offer music without the ICEL texts underneath. While it is disappointing that we can't offer these now, it is a great day for the Church that the ICEL texts will be available without royalty charges in this manner. This, in the long run, will have enormously beneficial results.