I encountered Catholics Come Home through a video posted on YouTube last week via AmP. Upon returning to YouTube to watch the video again, I noticed that it has been removed due to a copyright claim by Catholics Come Home Inc.
The video was originally here.
What is wrong with them? How could someone sharing this video with others possibly harm their organization? Why are they so obsessive to assert their copyright everywhere? Is their mission one of evangelization or of creating and asserting “intellectual property” rights?
Their mission statement is as follows:
Catholics Come Home, Inc. is an independent non-profit Catholic apostolate that creates effective and compassionate media messages and broadcasts them nationally and internationally, in order to inspire, educate and evangelize inactive Catholics and others, and invite them to live a deeper faith in Jesus Christ, in accord with the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church
Their mission statement seems entirely at odds with their actions here. The content they produce would be best suited by some sort of Creative Commons license that promotes and allows for the free flow of information. Even if they are worried about defamatory derivative works (though protecting against defamation is not the purpose of copyright), a non-free license which allows for the sharing of exact copies is a step in the right direction and would prevent any conflict here.
They do have the video on their own YouTube channel, but this doesn’t address my concern. I found the video and, by extension, the organization through the original user who uploaded it.
How can actions like this support a mission of evangelization? What if the early Christians shared this same fetish? Can you imagine how they would have proclaimed the Gospel? “This is the Word of God! The Good News! But don’t share it or we’ll sue you!”
I was initially very interested in learning more about the organization. Now, I am disgusted and I question their motives. I’ve emailed them and await a response. Hopefully they can provide me with some insight on how enforcing draconian copyright laws furthers their mission.
I’m at a loss.
