Version 1, December 2000

Copyright © 2000 No Compromise Ministries (www.nocomp.org)
A non-profit subsidiary of Capital Christian Center, an Idaho Corporation
2760 E. Fairview, Meridian, Idaho  83642, USA

You are permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

This General Public License is designed to release musical, video, and literary works to be freely used, copied, modified, translated, printed, projected, distributed and recorded without the direct permission of their creators, and without payment to their creators, as long as that same liberty is preserved for future users of these works or modified versions of these works.

It is our desire with this License to recreate some of the freedom of musical, and literary exchange that the United States Founding Fathers intended when they created our original Copyright and Public Domain system. Lost in our nations history is our Founding Father’s desire that written works and inventions only be copyrighted or patented for 14-years, at which time they were to enter the Public Domain allowing the general public free access to them. They believed that indefinite ownership of such works was not fitting for a free society and many of them even opted not to use the available 14-year period of copyright and patent protection.

In the words of Benjamin Franklin, who did not patent any of his many inventions, "That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."

One type of musical work that over the years has benefited highly from the Public Domain system were songs written for religious use. The Public Domain has provided a free flow of lyrics and music that are widely available for anyone to use or modify. New songs have been created by combining the lyrics of a song with new music, or by combining music of a song with new lyrics. Old verses have been modified and new verses have been added to existing songs. Also, spontaneous variations to these works can freely occur in the course of a religious service.

It was originally our desire to create a system for the free use of musical, video and literary works that included as little paperwork as possible. Unfortunately, because there is no current precedent in the music, video or literary world for what this License provides, and because the Public Domain system is no longer a viable system for the free exchange of 21st Century music, video and literary works, this General Public License was created. This type of License is already in use to enhance the development of computer software. These similarly licensed works are being released under such terms as "free software" and "copyleft software".

This License may be used by any other parties and was not exclusively designed for the music, videos and written works of its author or of those works found in the www.nocomp.org website.