Virtually ANY form of recording and selling, giving away, public presentation of any element containing copyright creative/intellectual content is illegal without having obtained the legal signed and notated releases from all individuals, companies, organizations, etc. who have a piece of the copyright ownership. That is the reality, with FEW exceptions like "fair use" "educational" etc. There ARE a LOT of gray areas (maybe? not really!) but again the REALITY of it all is that if you record, display, produce and give away or sell anything containing copyright material you are infringing on SOMEbody's copyrights and violating the usage thereof. That being said...
SOME schools (performance groups) will be well-informed, know exactly WHAT rights they have purchased and have a document of some form stating what they have obtained. They will then, releases in hand, hire outside services for video, audio or other reproduction, sales and distribution.
OTHER schools (performance groups) ARE NOT well-informed (or pretend to be so), DO NOT know exactly what rights they have obtained and might not even have gone so far as to obtain ANY rights. Many simply pick up a copy of a play, song, production, etc. and make copies of it (copyright violation in itself, more or less - copying printed copyright materials), and performing it, videotaping/recording it, selling it, distributing it - all going well beyond a host of copyright violations along the way.
WHILE others in these situations know so and do so, willing to ignore the legal copyright violations involved, others wouldn't knowingly go that direction after being informed of the potential for litigation and some pretty stiff fines. (even jail time, eh...) More don't know and don't care, figuring they will continue to slip through the legal cracks and get by with it.
So many of us in this business try to rationalize, mentally legalize, and otherwise find ways to justify doing this. A lot of people are convinced that their reasoning/rationalization is good-to-perfect, but would it hold up in court - NOPE! And as is noted in many legal documents... "...ignorance of the law is no defense... "
In addition to being a legal issue, copyright violation is also a moral one. "We all have done it", and will continue to do so, but that won't ALWAYSÂ protect us or keep us out of hell or purgatory - or where ever people who break the law go...
...oh, court/jail/prison.
Eventually, most of us will get caught, to a greater or lesser degree. Depending on the circumstances we'll get a cease and desist, a slap on the wrist, or something personally or economically much worse - even devastating. Sooner or later, if enough copyright violations are committed, if enough illegally produced, distributed and sold DVDs, etc. are handled, bad things are gonna happen.
Then again, there are people who smoke, drink, do drugs and fornicate with abandon and live to be a hundred, while others who walk the line in all aspects of life die young.
Don't get me wrong here, I am NOT preaching. I think what I am doing is stating the facts. Each of us has to make our own determination how far out on the copyright limb we want to go. It is a personal decision that really should be a legal decision, but due to much of the "unfairness" REAL, or IMAGINED, of some things copyright (you've seen, heard, read, listened to the arguments - and there are PLENTY), will be mostly ignored or mentally/morally avoided. Like telling ourselves, "don't go there." Sort of like that illogical logic about the tree falling in a forest and no one being there to hear it.
Copyright laws, when explained by a knowledgeable attorney (who among us can understand all that legalese?) has not much flexibility, nor gray areas.
Most everyone, at one time or another, sooner or later, knowingly or unknowingly violates some copyright somewhere. Some will get caught and pay the price. Some won't. It's a choice, and all choices/decisions we make have consequences.
