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Martin Luther King Jr's Children In Court Over MLK IP
cervesaebraciator writes "Slashdot has reported before about the copyright nightmare of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' Speech. Now, questions of intellectual property and the legacy of Dr. King have caused his children to go to court. The estate, run by King's sons, claims the rights to the intellectual property and memorabilia of Dr. King as assets. Accordingly, it has filed suit against the non-profit Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Change, run by King's daughter, for plans to continue using King memorabilia once a royalty-free licensing agreement expires, (which the estate says will be in September). As is the case with increasing frequency, one is left to wonder about the implications intellectual property claims have for free speech when they can be applied to so public a figure as Dr. King."
MLK's legacy capitalizing on MLK's legacy.
Go for it kids!
I'm certain Michael Jackson's surviving relatives could teach them some real lessons about infighting and degrading the overall value of the property with unseemly squabbles.
i had a dream...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Dr. King was certainly a very positive agent of change in the world. Too bad his children now exemplify everything that is wrong with it.
I don't think this was part of King's dream.
I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the contents of their IP portfolio. Where they can use their last name to profit from my legacy.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
... for stuff we can make money on, then expect to see jackbooted thugs raiding your offices if you continue to use our grandfather's public speech in public discourse without paying us.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...that my children will undo everything positive about my life.
Sing Happy Birthday. Record it. Sell it.
I dare you.
I'm just saying, if we're going to talk about the insanity of copyright law in regards to things one assumes are in the public domain, I Have a Dream isn't first on the list of absurd examples...
These useless parasites - King's sons - are stealing our culture. They are a disgrace to Dr King's memory.
I have a DRM!
:-D
I wonder if the release of Dr. King's works to the world and substantial realization of social justice in America will coincide. Maybe the continued familial infighting will prolong both of those events.
...of many more years of royalites!
Call me racist, but this type of stuff coming from minorities does not surprise me.
You've obviously missed some select cuts of history, where children or even distant relatives, have done like and frittered away their family fortunes, enriching lawyers only in the process.
I was just quoting a case in California Law to a colleague this morning, where no more than 25% of an estate may be left to charity if there are surviving relatives. One charity would be a school for the deaf. Damn the charities, the cousin said and usurped 75% of the estate and sold it off. Back in the early 1900's.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
MLK and his family had to stop record labels from making copies of the speech to sell even back while he was alive
One, Dr King is most probably spinning in his grave. I can't imagine a world where Dr. King wanted access limited to his "I have a dream" speech.
Two, if the family wants his name back, they can have it. "Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard" doesn't fit on the stationary anyway.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
...of many more years of royalites!
Call me racist, but this type of stuff coming from minorities does not surprise me.
Is there any population group where dickheaded infighting over who gets to inherit the family cash is a surprise? Even people too poor to have assets worth fighting over can use 'dividing the estate' as a proxy for all the childhood emnities over who mommy and daddy loved best, magnified by all the anxiety, rivalry, bitterness, and jealousy about who did, and didn't, achieve the life that they wanted for themselves, with nothing but a few trinkets of sentimental value. Once you put some cash on the table... break out the lawyers.
Do you think that King would want his speech (of historical importance) locked up behind copyright? Is this how they choose to honor their father's memory?
Just disgusting.
Does IP law really mean that if I invent something my greedy bastard children get to lay claim on it for decades???
Can you will it to a charity?
This just sounds like the family cash cow as everybody tries to make bank on what daddy did.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This kind of thing is a great example of why long posthumous copyrights need to be abolished. Along with a certan quantity of other copyright schemes. This in no way encourages the creation of new works, nor innovation except in the field of fivolous lawsuits.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
If they don't want his historic speech to be heard by people, then I propose we just forget about him and pretend he never existed. Their precious IP will be worthless if nobody even know who MLK is anymore.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I wondered how this speech could even be copyrighted, as apparently it wasn't registered. Mr wiki says there was a lawsuit a few years ago to determine whether the speech was copyrighted or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream
What I don't get is, Mr wiki also claims the speech is under copyright for 120 years, but shouldn't it have been death + 50 years?
The worst part about it, is I find it difficult to believe that someone who made a speech like that would not want it in the public domain. Not having it in the public domain sort of defeats the purpose of the speech.
one is left to wonder about the implications intellectual property claims have for free speech when they can be applied to so public a figure as Dr. King.
One is left to wonder etc. when they can be applied beyond the lifetime of the creator of the IP, famous or not
More music, fewer hits
Anybody who's preaching to you probably has a few skeletons to hide.
Anybody who's actually living by the tenets you'll probably never hear about because if you're BEING humble instead of 'SAYING' you're humble, few people will notice you at all.
Why does copyright run for longer than the author's life? Wasn't it ment to support the author, not {his agents,his estate,some random stranger or company of strangers who bought up the rights,...}?
Tolkien
Roddenberry
To the list of people whose children have been dicks with their parent's IP.
Anybody else have other memorable examples?
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day my children will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these images and speeches to be copyrighted, and that it should be self-evident: that all of my children are entitled to residual revenue in perpetuity, as authorized under section 6 of the copyright act of 1976"
Dr. king would slap all his kids so hard for being that kind of douchebag.
Lets flip it hard see how they like that.
So whitey was right. All them niggers just greedy savages out for themselves and money.
They don't really give a fuck about equality, fairness, what's right. Just money and selfishness.
Looks like nobody shared your dream.
As is the case with increasing frequency, one is left to wonder about the implications intellectual property claims have for free speech when they can be applied to so public a figure as Dr. King.
Sorry, Subby, but no, "free speech" doesn't mean you can freely appropriate someone's work just because they're a "public figure". See, the "free" part is about their freedom from persecution, not your cost of royalties when you put their speech on t-shirts.
IP means "intellectual property," as you well know, which is a broad term for the only semi-related torts and laws governing the use and reproduction of ideas: copyright, patents, trademarks & trade dress, publicity, and trade secrets. Copyright is one of the three main pillars of IP law.
If you want to bitch about how useless "intellectual property" is as a term when it covers such disparate and unrelated laws & torts, then you're several centuries too late. All of property law has long been described as "a bundle of sticks," because there's almost no relation between trespass & nuisance, wills & trusts and other estate law, landlord-tenant law, easements, covenants, water rights, subsurface rights, bailment, all the dozens of other semi-random "involves a thing or place" legal concepts you have learn in Property class. But without the full set, the concept of property falls apart.
Same goes for intellectual property, right or wrong.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I might actually give a shit about his kids if it wasn't for the fact that they're just wrangling amongst themselves over money.
This is why IP/Copyright/etc/etc should be life of the creator +20 years or a flat 20 years in the case of assets held by a corporation.
It has now been over FIFTY YEARS since the man gave his famous speech. And he's been dead for 45 of them. I'd think that his children have reaped a decent return off something they didn't do for themselves.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Replace Martin Luther King Day with "Civil Rights Day". Then let the lawyers figure it out for the family....
Is there any population group where dickheaded infighting ... is a surprise?
No.
The jury and evidence said that the gunshot came from Trayvon (at least the evidence as understood by the jury).
That isn't saying ANYTHING about Zimmerman following then provoking Trayvon.
Your assertion that it does indicates you were never interested in facts, only in conclusion.
So, anyone interested in encouraging their children
to be more enterprising & active in earning a living
& providing for themselves could - in some lawyer-
approved text, included in their will - make clear
that their wish is that any / all IP, that they (the parent)
may have created & contributed to the world, should
be considered to be in the Public Domain forever.
Such a text might even include a statement that the\
parent believes that they wish to encourage children
to do those things (listed above).
Q.E.D. (at least for those, who want to continue the
work, rather than encourage the consumption - by
the children - of any assets left to them)
The example (of action, if not will text, per se) is
The B. & M. Gates Foundation.
Why not "use up" - preferably, in humane ways -
the wealth, rather than hand it over to people,
who had little to do with its creation...?
Do you want to read a really cool speech that inspired millions to change the world? $5 please...
An enormous $230 million+ chunk of Howard Hughes' estate took decades just to settle which area had jurisdiction over it, and was finally settled in 2010.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
My Little ... ?
is it 75 years now?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A whole family leeching its income off the reputation of a dead ancestor.
Maybe they can get rights for the Declaration of Independence assigned to Jefferson's descendents.
Perhaps we should have to pay to read the U.S. Constitution?
And, certainly, the MLK descendents need to successfully pursue SCO's claims. That is most fitting.
I say to you, my friends, though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a DRM. It is a DRM deeply rooted in the American DRM. I have a DRM that one day this nation will rise up, live up the true meaning of it's creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all [content] is created [protected]." .... I have a DRM so that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but [can profit] by the content [of this speech].
Situations like these prompt people to suggest we use MLK's kids behavior to judge the content of their character.
As ironic and clever as such remarks sound, they miss the big picture. These problems happen because we have a copyright system that tries to shoehorn recordings and ideas into a legal framework designed for tangible objects. The legal morass would entangle nearly anyone into such messes.
We're seeing the result of a broken system. To blame the children misses that point.
Just one example from the article: "The estate claims in the filing that it is the owner of the worldwide rights and property interests involving King's name, image, likeness, recorded voice and memorabilia."
Just think of the challenge of corralling things like the use of a name like King or an image of someone who perpetually put himself in the public eye, in front of cameras. Now throw in that new media with new distribution properties exist today that no one could have conceived of then. Combine that with the legal framework designed for physical objects. Maybe when MLK was alive he could have managed these things since it was him, but now people can only guess at what he would want and argue over differences, not that they have to follow what he wants because the law says other people own rights to things like his "likeness."
I'd make the headline "IP laws so outdated and twisted, they sink even MLK's family into a legal swamp".
MLK's legacy has largely been decimated by those who claim to support him the most.
One of his most famous sayings was that he had a dream that his four children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
People like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who are now seen as civil rights leaders, basically threw that out completely.and shit on it at almost every turn. Groups like the NAACP are pushing for criminal prosecution of, for example, the rodeo clown who made fun of Obama, even though people in much bigger areas of the limelight have done much worse things to make fun of other presidents.
Jackson and Sharpton are a mixed bag, like many public figures. Some of the causes that they pick up are more noble than others. I agree that hate speech ought to be protected where it doesn't directly incite violence. The NAACP is wrong to try and criminalize mockery of the president; that's one of the things that separates the United States from countries like Russia, where mockery of the leader is verboten.
George Zimmerman would never have seen prosecution if he was black or Trayvon was white; guilty or not the evidence just wasn't there which is why they originally chose not to prosecute, and only did so after pressure from racial groups, which goes to show that in America, now the only requirement for prosecution is that public opinion be against you regardless of whether or not you can be proven guilty.
I don't think you can say this. There have been numerous other Americans tried when they murdered another person and claimed self-defense. Trying Zimmerman was not a race thing. Not trying Zimmerman was what many of us felt was a race thing. Maybe there was enough evidence to convict and maybe the prosecution did a poor job; maybe there wasn't enough evidence and the verdict was correct. However, Zimmerman was charged, as he should have been in a case where there was some doubt as to how valid his self-defense claim was.
And how are programs like affirmative action following in that spirit? They tell you that, for example, if you have slanted eyes then you immediately deserve lower preference than anybody, but if you have black skin then you automatically get to be first in line.
What a joke the civil rights movement has become.
How does affirmative action make the civil rights movement a joke? It was one of the movement's crowning achievements. You do realize that affirmative action was instituted to counteract widespread institutional discrimination against African-Americans, Native-Americans, Hispanics, women, and so on, right? Are you claiming that institutional discrimination no longer exists, and that the need for affirmative action is no longer there? I totally disagree, and I think information such as this supports me.
There will come a day when AA is hurting more than it is helping. I don't believe we have reached that day, yet.
Works created after 1978 have life of author + 70.
Works created earlier, including the speech have a more complicated calculation. It appears there is an original term of 28 years, then the heirs can renew it for another 67 years. So that would be a whopping 95 years. ONLY another 45 to go.
This is a tough world, and money is security. They aren't killing anyone, they're just trying to capitalize on an opportunity to make money.
That doesn't mean we, society, should allow them to monopolize a key cultural and historical figure. We should just tell them "No. Fuck off." Easy as that.
Be careful what you wish for, Dr. King.
I didn't know his dream was for his sons to make a fortune off his activism...silly me.
You have to realize that COPYRIGHT is and always has been CENSORSHIP. Censorship has always been about POWER and CONTROL and finally Power and Control is a means of getting MONEY.
So yeah, the case is about money, power and control, just your usual trait that resides in us humans.
Regards Slashdotgirl
The more I know, the less I know
He plagiarized like 90% of that speech. It's not his IP.
Undo moderation error
Why is all the good stuff already modded 5, when I have mod points?
Don't you mean 'As dead a figure as Dr King'? Where did this fantasy arise that children have any right to a parent's cultural artifacts, or are better custodians of them than any other randomly-selected person? Once you are dead, it shoudl be open slather, end of story.
Consider, hypothetically, if Trayvon Martin had been an unarmed 17 year old white male cutting through a predominantly black neighborhood, and was confronted by a 26 year old black male with a gun, who shoots the 17 year old to death in the ensuing struggle. Do you honestly think that a Southern US jury would have considered a self-defense argument even remotely plausible? That would be incredibly naÃve,IMHO.
There are here quite a number of IP violations about MLK's famous quote! All of these will be reported to the rights holders and the commenter duly prosecuted.
This is quite similar to the case of the Zapruder film. You have every right to recite the speech, this is an issue stemming back to 1963 when 2 companies started selling the speech and King sued them for the rights.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
We're definitely judging them by the content of their character now.
to drug free underwear