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The Copyright Nightmare of 'I Have a Dream'
CoveredTrax writes "If you weren't alive to witness Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech on the Washington Mall 48 years ago this week, you might try to switch on the old YouTube and dial it up. But you won't find it there or anywhere else; rights to its usage remain with King and his family. Typically, a speech broadcast to a large audience on radio and television (and considered instrumental in historic political changes and ranked as the most important speech in 20th century American history) would seem to be a prime candidate for the public domain. But the copyright dilemma began in December 1963, when King sued Mister Maestro, Inc., and Twentieth Century Fox Records Company to stop the unauthorized sale of records of the 17-minute oration."
Right...? Or is Disney going to get another copyright extension passed?
In related news, the group building the memorial had to ~pay~ MLK's family 800,000 dollars for the rights to his image and words. http://goodnightsnack.com/2011/08/26/martin-luther-king-jr-family-charges-800k-to-use-his-words-on-commemorative-dc-statue-greed/
Agile Artisans
How is this different from Steam Boat Willy? Both are important to culture, but both are unavailable in the public domain. Intellectual property laws in this country have become obscene. It is time to put an end to century laws and go back to a sensible two generation intellectual property right ownership (38 years).
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
I have listened to this speech at work on the internet every year on the anniversary of MLK's death. The speech text and audio have never been hard to find. Here is an example site:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
I believe this counts as "anywhere else."
Obviously the family is not very big on living up to MLK's dream.
MLK: I have a dream.
FOX: We have a congress. Your move.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Not to be mean or tawdry, but I would assume the answer to that question is "women."
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Yes, the speech is not on YouTube. Not here, here, or even here. It's definitely not here.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
He was trying to step people MAKING money off his shit.
If his shit was given away for free, that would probably have been ok him.
Atleast i hope so, or the dude wasnt as cool as i thought.
Also, at the request of the King family, his FBI file is sealed until 2027.. what does a Reverend have to hide?
If FBI violated your privacy and concocted a file, do you mind if i take a peek?
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Shame that 90% of his family are money grubbing whores.
I have my own dream that someday we will end this copyright foolishness. That people will realize that ideals once expressed become part of our collective humanity, and not something to be enslaved forever to the false god of capitalistic profits. I see a day when all children have the chance to make beautiful music and that music not be shacked by men who make no art. Then if we the people enjoy that music, then those children can earn a comfortable living for themselves from their endeavors.
Yes, I have seen the promised land and it is Creative Commons!
Thank God almighty we are free at least from US style Copyright!!!
Yes he would. He stopped a company from profiting from his speech. But nowhere has it been said that he turned around & did the same thing? Who can say that if he were alive today that he'd allow it to be viewed for free on a site like YouTube? Or have it up on a site of his own?
I might not like the corporate use of IP law, I do recognize that IP law is still useful in protecting the originators of such work from being stolen by others for profit. There are a lot of people who use IP law to keep their ideas available to others without allow those same others from profiting from their work. I do believe that's what is behind the idea of Copyleft & the use of IP law in OSS.
MLK was alive for the suit against Mister Maestro and Twentieth Century Fox.
The copyright notice, hastily scribbled onto the text of the speech by Mr. King's attorney as copies were being mimeographed in the press tent the day of the speech is one of the financial pillars that gave MLK's organization the funding to keep moving forward.
To be clear, the speech had been pressed onto records and was being sold over over the country as a single. The MLK foundation stepped in, enforced the copyright, and claimed a cut to continue Mr. King's work.
Martin Luther King, Jr. vs Mister Maestro, Inc., and 20th Century-Fox Record Corporation USDC, S.D.N.Y. (12-13-1963) 224 F.Supp.101, 140 USPQ 366. Since I'm guessing you do not actually know -- MLK died on April 4, 1968, about 5 years after you think he was "rolling over in his grave."
-GiH
Yeah. Except the description in the TFS anyway, what started it all, wasn't draconian copyright law. It was a group trying to make a profit off of someone elses work without compensating them.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
In 1963 it would have been very hard to propagate an important bit of information if people can't make money on the prospect.
If this attitude had prevailed a couple hundred years earlier, MLK would have been petitioning the Queen.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Ever since their mother's death, MLK's children have done nothing but fight over the rights in regards to their father, and the profits to be gained by selling them. For instance, in regards to a proposed MLK movie: "Bernice King and her eldest brother, Martin III, say they are "taking action" against their estranged sibling, Dexter, who is chief executive of the King estate, because he apparently decided to negotiate the entire film deal with Spielberg and Dreamworks without attempting to seek their permission." (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-king-family-fighting-over-the-dream-1688644.html). And notice how Dexter is the chief executive of the estate. That means he is entirely within his rights to negotiate a movie deal on behalf of the estate. Book deals and memoirs regarding MLK and Coretta King, worth millions of dollars, have been lost due to infighting and court battles (http://www.thegrio.com/top-stories/atlanta-ap----two-children.php)(http://cards6.wordpress.com/2008/11/02/in-fighting-between-king-family-tarnishes-king-legacy/).
It's really very sad. MLK certainly did a great thing for this country, centered around the march and his "I Have A Dream" speech. However, it seems his children have a dream as well: to make as much money off their father's legacy. I would be willing to bet that MLK, were he still alive, would be ashamed of how is children are acting. They are disrespecting their father and their legacy.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
He directed his organization to license its use and used the money to fund his organization. The estate has continued the practice. Given how widely available the text and audio is, there's a lot of fire and brimstone over this basic and well understood application of black-letter copyright law. You're allowed to profit from your work during your lifetime, afterward your heirs get to profit from your work for a set period of time.
Now, Happy Birthday to You, THERE'S a sticky copyright issue.
-GiH
He'd roll in his grave? From the article summary, it seems like he himself was suing to prevent people from spreading it for money. If he was truly egalitarian and concerned for the cause above all else, shouldn't he have allowed any distribution possible? He was pulling the same stuff himself!
I would assume that MLK sued precisely BECAUSE his speech was being sold. Because selling something automatically restricts it. If it were being distributed freely, he would probably have not objected, because everyone could access it. He was a very bright man, who I am sure understood that ideas travel best when they are free. I would also assume that he sued because he felt that his speech was not something that should be profited off of, as it would simply be yet another form of exploitation.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Anybody from Atlanta should be able to attest that Dr. King's family is a bunch of degenerates who ride on his accomplishments for their own monetary / political / social gain. Just check out the frequent lawsuits and scandals involving family members and the King Center.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
FWIW, I once listened to the speech while reading along to the text of the speech as found in a book of famous speeches I had.
I learned a lesson that day which is that publishers will publish the "official" text which may differ significantly from that which was actually delivered. I was pretty annoyed because I paid good money for the book and wanted to read along to the speech.
Did you identify a change in the message beyond the mere words, or was it just a sloppy transcription? Perhaps they published a version of the speech he wrote down beforehand, which would of course not be identical to something spoken over 17 minutes by anyone who knows well enough to not stare at the paper for the duration of the delivery.
then it can be changed to "I have a DRM".
If copyright term extensions in excess of the Berne minimum were rolled back, Microsoft could make more stock footage and stock music available to users of Windows Movie Maker.
MLK: I have a dream.
FOX: We have a congress. Your move.
Are you blaming Congress for the copyright that King himself took out? And that his family still holds?
King didn't have to copyright his speeches. But he did. And he did it to make money. If you think there's fault in this, then put it squarely where it belongs: King himself, and later, his family.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
That is because he changed the Speech while speaking. The "Official Text" is the written speech, the Orration is different. This is an "Intended Feature". Deal with it.
In 1952 Rev. Archibald Carey gave a speech at the Republican National Convention. Here is part of that “not so well known” speech by Rev. Archibald Carey, Jr. at the Republican Convention in 1952: “We, Negro Americans, sing with all loyal Americans: My country ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, Land of the Pilgrims’ pride From every mountainside Let freedom ring! That’s exactly what we mean – from every mountain side, let freedom ring. Not only from the Green Mountains and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire; not only from the Catskills of New York; but from the Ozarks in Arkansas, from the Stone Mountain in Georgia, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia – let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States, but for the disinherited of all the earth — may the Republican Party, under God, from every mountainside, LET FREEDOM RING!” And, here are the famous words from the “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on August 28, 1963: This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, Land of the pilgrim’s pride, From every mountainside, Let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
The entry/non-entry of Dr. King's speech into the public domain is a famous case in copyright circles - and in fact, was one reason the copyright laws were changed. It's a fascinating story.
First you need to realize that prior to 1976, unless you put a copyright mark on a document and properly registed it, it was presumed to be in the public domain as soon as it was made public. This led to a number of problems and disputes, and today is widely viewed as being overly punative to people who simply forget to put the mark on a document before releasing it. Today's copyright laws eliminate the "all or nothing" nature of the 1909 Act, and sensibly declare that copyright rests with the author, regardless of whether they properly marked it.
Second, there's an interesting history behind the I Have a Dream speech. While the factual accounts of exactly what happened differ, Dr. King and his associates apparently distributed advance copies of the speech without the copyright mark on them to a group of journalists. Recognizing that this was a serious error, others within Dr. King's circle reportedly re-collected each of the advance copies, and then redistributed them with the copyright mark hand written on the document. So there was a factual question as to whether the textual copy of the speech was put into the public domain or not registered with the copyright office correctly.
There was less dispute over the video and audio. As others have noted, Dr. King improvised/departed from the prepared text a number of times. So there was an argument that, even if Dr. King had lost the copyright on the original text (which is itself debatable), he maintained the copyright on the "performance" of the speach, and was thus entitled to a separate copyright (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.,_Inc._v._CBS,_Inc.).
I also believe that the speech is freely licensed to anyone engaging in educational activities - so it's not quite as eggregious on the part of the family as many have suggested.
Why should a speech be a part of public domain?
Poltical speech made in public by political figure should not protected by copyright. Full stop.
This is not in the public's interest, as exercising copyrights on it limits the public's access to political speech. Political speech is one of the most protected forms of speech, as its essential to democracy.
That is why the speech SHOULD NOT be protected by copyright.
But what argument for protecting is there? Bearing in mind that the purpose of copyright was primarily "to promote science and the useful arts", and does so by granting artists limited exclusive protections over their works to motivate and enable them to do so as the end goal.
Is anyone arguing that King would not have been motivated to make the speech without proprietary protections on it to enable him to profit from the sales of recordings and performances in the same way a poet or musician makes a living?
Frankly, that's absurd on its face.
You have to really contort to justify that copyright should apply to political speech in the first place. And then that argument needs to overcome the public interest in having political speech in the public domain.
Now I know why the evangelists waited 70 years before writing it down.
I think the biggest flaw in MLK's character was his academic plagiarism.
His thesis overall, did create new scholarly works but sections of his writings was copied and reworded as his own.
The speech in question however we can safely say was his own, the
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado etc etc
is offcourse from a speech by Archibald Carey a friend and colleague of MLK but the structuring is entirely different.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.