Flutterby™! : Religion Fragments

At $work, I've been getting involved in the sidelines of some issues. Summary: Central Church publishes audio of what is essentially bible snippet readings on their website along with snippets from another book, available with a nominal subscription/donation. Regional Church puts them on their phone system for people to listen to, mostly it seemsfor while they are driving down the road for the "whats a podcast/MP3? generation". Most of the regional church members subscript to the central church website and publishing company 'cause it's the thing they do. Central church is grumbling about massively increasing licensing fees and such, it's already getting $500 every three months for letting the regional church broadcast it's content. My blasphemous suggestion to the regional church association was: Why not produce/record your own?

And the argument of is it a "Church" or "Publishing Company" begins....

For me, it's just re-enforced how "Religion" becomes a cluster of people that didn't have sense to find their own way being used by others. If the purpose of the Church is to spread the word/works for the good of humankind, why is licensing/republishing so expensive? Sure, you want/need to pay for production, but I'm watching this spiral quickly. In my mind, you raise money for production and distribution and try to get it out there. Other groups wanting to share your materials are a bonus, not a licensing/revenue problem.

Just therapeutically ranting into a corner of the void. Thank You.