Do US public school students have a First Amendment right to be able to perform sacred music? I believe that in the US, public schools are allowed to perform music with religious texts, and that this has been upheld by the Supreme Court on the grounds that the music program is teaching music, heritage, and culture, not indoctrination. I lack the legal knowledge to be able to quote case law and wouldn't mind being educated or having my assumptions corrected. If a public school banned the performance, by students, for a public audience, of music with religious texts, could a student or student's parent (assuming the student is a minor) claim that their First Amendment right has been violated by the ban? This is a public performance, by students, which is organized by the school. The concert program is a long-standing tradition which usually includes many different songs from all over the world and a small number of sacred songs. The administration is considering banning the ones with religious content. Edit to clarify a few comments: No student would be forced to do anything at contrary to their beliefs. The performance would be singing, instrumental.
This question mixes up two separate although related issues: Does a student have a first amendment right to perform &quot;sacred&quot; music during school time? Is a public school allowed to include such in its curriculum, or does the First Amendment's Establishment Clause forbid that? The answer hinted at in the question applies only to issue 2, while the title of the question goes to issue 1. Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962) held that school officials may not compose an official prayer, and mandate or encourage its recitation. (mandatory recitation would probably have been prohibited by West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943) much earlier.) The ruling of Engel v. Vitale, would also have applied to sung prayers. Later rulings, consistent with Engle prohibited &quot;one minute for prayer or meditation&quot; ( Wallace v. Jaffree (1985)), clergy-led prayer at middle school graduation ceremonies (Lee v. Weisman (1992)), and school-organized student-led prayer at high school football games (Santa Fe ISD v. Doe (2000)). But none of these prohibited religious music as part of an instructional music program that was not a form of worship. All the above cases prohibited school-organized prayers intended as prayer or worship. As to issue #1, it is settled that students have the right to pray privately, in ways that do not disrupt school activities. It is hard to see how performing religious music could be done privately and non-disruptively. Neither students nor their parents have a right to insist that certain topics be included in the school curriculum. The students have a right to pray, but not to insist that the school organize prayers or include religious music in its music program.
There is no country in the world that has absolute freedom of speech. There are many that have extreme limits on it. The country with the greatest freedom is probably the United States of America but even there there are limits. For example, it is illegal to defame someone. That is, make a factual statement about a person or organization that is not true and that could damage their reputation. For your case, as a student of the school you are subject to the rules of the school. If your statement breaks those rules you can be sanctioned. If the school is public, it would generally be as restricted as the government is in limiting free speech but, as stated above, such restrictions depend on where you are.
Whether the use of excerpts from songs protected by copyright in the cover version of a different song is a &quot;fair use&quot; under US law is always a fact-driven question, and often there is no clear answer to fair use issues short of a lawsuit. One must remember that fair use is a specifically united-states legal concept, and that reproduction of such a cover version outside the US would not be protected by fair use, even if it was fair use under US law. Fair use is defined by 17 USC 107. That law spells out the four factors that must always be considered in any fair use claim. They are: (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. These have been explained and analyzed in several answers here on law.se, recently including this answer. In this case the commercial nature of the compilation probably causes factor (1) to lean against fair use. The creative character of the songs being used will cause factor (2) to lean slightly against fair use. That the use is for a charitable purpose might have a positive effect on factor (1), although it does not fit the &quot;educational&quot; purpose specifically mentioned in the law. I don't see how this would be in any way relevant to the other three factors, but it might influence the decisions of copyright owners. There is not enough information in the question to even approximate an analysis of the other two factors in this case. Note that the &quot;substantiality&quot; mentioned in factor (2) refers to how much of the source work is used, not how large a part of the resulting work it forms. Note also that there is a wide range of what has been acceptable here. In one famous case (Harper v Nation Enterprises) some 300 words of a 500 page book were found not to be fair use because they were held to be the &quot;heart of the work&quot;; in that case there was also a substantial market effect. One might want to consult a lawyer with expertise in copyright and music to get a better idea if the specific use seems likely to be a fair use. Alternatively, one could ask the copyright owners of the works of which excerpts are to be included if a license can be obtained. Some owners will in some cases provide licenses for a small fee or even for no fee if the source is properly acknowledged. Others will not. Licensing of one song by a given artist does not affect whether use of another song by the same artist is or is not fair use, but it might influence the willingness of that artist to license the second song on favorable terms.
The first sub-question here is whether (public) schools can compel (parents of) students to acquire internet service, a computer, and a webcam. The MA Dept. of Education maintains that public schools must purchase at public expense textbooks and other instructional materials and supplies intended for use and re-use over a period of years, and computers fall in the category of materials intended for schools to purchase and use and re-use. There is no legislative authority to compel parents to purchase equipment or sign up for internet services. If there is a choice between in-person and online instruction, the legal requirement to attend school can be satisfied by in-person instruction. The second sub-question is whether, if a child does have the technical ability to be connected to class via the internet, can they legally require the camera to be turned on? Every district has rules, so if there is a rule requiring parental consent in this situation, then parental consent is required. If it is legal at that level, there is still a legal risk to the school. Schools can generally do those things that are reasonably necessary for educating students as long as it doesn't infringe on fundamental constitutional rights, and the camera-on requirement is educationally reasonable. The risk to the school is violating the federal law FERPA, specifically a potential violation of the privacy requirements. Schools must protect personal information, which includes anything streaming from the camera (pictures, for example, are personally identifiable information). If you assume that they have an absolutely secure connection, then there is no risk of privacy violation. However, if you believe, even reasonably so, that a school practice creates a risk of breach of privacy, that still does not create a special right to avoid school.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not prohibit people with no affiliation with the government from trying to convert people to their religion in a way not endorsed by a government official or agency. It could be that there is some content neutral prohibition on strangers accosting young school children if that person is so persistent that it amounts to content neutral harassment, or that the person might actually be a sex offender prohibited from contacting children. But, the facts of the question don't seem to compel this conclusion. Even if it violates any law to do this, it is not a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Almost no constitutional right, for the most part, applies or gives rise to an all-encompassing right at all times. Schools can determine that certain times are off limits as activity during those times may interrupt the environment most conducive to learning, or for other articulable reasons; this is fine so long as it is applied evenly. Schools may say you may not hand out literature at certain times, only before or after classes, weekends, or put limits on the place or manner of distribution. There are examples of this premise that exist, pertaining to nearly every right, otherwise considered absolute. This is no different than the principle that while Americans enjoy the right to free speech, not all speech is protected at all times, or that the right to bear arms does not apply to all people, places, or environs.
This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)&mdash; which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude&mdash; and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.
Your question is whether you can copy instrumental portions of recorded music, and modify it to create a new work, without permission. The answer is that this is illegal. This would be creating a "derivative work", and under copyright law, only the copyright holder has the right to authorize creation of a derivative work. Whether or not you have paid for a copy of a recording, you would still need a separate license to legally extract and use part of a recording. This includes taking just one instrument, and includes taking just a part of one instrument. Material on Youtube is subject to different licenses: in some cases items are free of restrictions, in some cases, you can't legally copy them at all. The standard Youtube license does not allow any copying. Copyright infringement of music is rather common. Enforcement of copyright must be pursued by the copyright holder, and you would need to discuss your specific plans with a copyright attorney to determine your probability of getting sued. Ultimately, you might get away with minimal copying, relying on a fair use defense (you still get sued, but you might prevail and not have to pay). There are street rumors that there is an N-note threshold for copyright infringement, where people often pick numbers from 3 to 7, but in fact there is no clear rule. This resource assembles relevant case law. Bridgeport Music v. Dimension Films, in the 6th District, establishes the rule that any amount of copying is infringement, whereas VMG Salsoul, LLC v. Ciccone in the 9th District rejects that finding and allowed a case of .23 seconds (230 milliseconds) of copying. The "de minimis" doctrine is independent of "fair use" which has a statutory basis, but seems to have arisen from similarity doctrines which are involved in proving that copying took place.