‘We Shall Overcome’ Is Put in Public Domain in a Copyright Settlement

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/business/media/we-shall-overcome-copyright.html

by denzil_correa • 8 years ago

132 35 8 years ago

nytimes.com

icebraining• 8 years ago

An interview with Pete Seeger about the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-FmQEFFFko

phjesusthatguy3• 8 years ago

The moral of the story is: if you're running into (truly) BS legal ramifications for your project, fight it.

omeid2• 8 years ago

Assuming, you can afford a law firm.

moomin• 8 years ago

Not what I’d consider the moral of the story at all. I’d say the moral was: just because you can win, doesn’t mean you should.

Some movie gets to use a clip, a whole bunch of project for disadvantaged people don’t get funded. Hard to cheer a victory against BS copyright this time.

drdeadringer• 8 years ago

Now I'm curious about church hymns and then again about how UUs can "get away with" changing the words to "others' hymns" and republish as new.

matt4077• 8 years ago

You can create a new work subject to copyright incorporating other works. Any movie with music is an example, and so is “sampling” in music, or translations of books.

At issue here is wether the changes to the song were significant enough for it to be considered a creative work.

This is no different than the test for a de novo work:

    Echo „hello world“

Is not enough to trigger copyright protection. Yet the MacOS source code is. Somewhere between the two, there is a line of demarcation. Where exactly that line is was the subject of this lawsuit.

peterburkimsher2• 8 years ago

Relevant discussion recently about copyright and church songs (disclaimer - I wrote the first rant, and people contributed in the replies):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16227520

djsumdog• 8 years ago

Most of those traditional church hymns are really old; many not subject to copyright or, those that are, simply no one cares. If the UU had to fight for them, some could be protected under satire/parody.

vanderZwan2• 8 years ago

In a statement, Ludlow said royalties from the song since the early 1960s had been donated to the nonprofit Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, which created the We Shall Overcome Fund to distribute all of the royalties through grants and scholarships in black communities. It was not immediately clear how much money the fund had distributed. “Without the same scope of copyright protection, Highlander’s grants and scholarships will be deeply affected in the future,” the statement said.

Without transparency, I am leaning towards assuming there is a hefty dose of Hollywood Accounting (or whatever the name for the the music industry's equivalent is) going on[0].

Ludlow also said uses of the song had in the past been “carefully vetted” but warned that its words and melody could now be used by advertising agencies and others “in any manner they wish, including inaccurate historical uses, commercials, parodies, spoofs and jokes, and even for political purposes by those who oppose civil rights for all Americans.”

Oh I am sure that a for-profit company "vetting" potential clients is much more reliable than the inevitability of a huge social backlash against anyone foolish enough to use this song for selfish purposes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

halestock• 8 years ago

Eh, I'm sure this is going to end up in a Coca-Cola commercial eventually.

greglindahl• 8 years ago

Parodies, spoofs, and jokes are often fair use. It's bizarre that a copyright owner would say that.

wutbrodo2• 8 years ago

It's bizarre that a copyright owner would say that.

I dunno, intellectual dishonesty from any party when it comes to this topic doesn't strike me as "bizarre" as much as "super common".

ENOTTY• 8 years ago

CharityNavigator entry for Highlander Center: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

arkades• 8 years ago

They seem to do reasonably well on the Transparency subsection.

IntronExon• 8 years ago

I went in hoping for blood, but that’s actually pretty good. Unless they’re fudging their financials in a truly criminal way, and there’s no reason to believe that, it’s a tight ship with low administrative overhead. They’re spending a bit over 70% on their programs, and not too much on admin or fundraising.

vanderZwan2• 8 years ago

Glad to see that the charity donated to is OK, but that is still after the royalties are donated. Hollywood accounting is not yet ruled out.

confounded• 8 years ago

It's legit. There's a good documentary about it on FilmStruck at the moment. MLK and Rosa Parks were alums.

duxup• 8 years ago

"We shall overcome our hunger for a taco dripping with cheese!"

amag2• 8 years ago

'We Shall Overcome' was unfortunately forever destroyed for me by a Swedish politician (Birgit Friggebo) who suggested it once in a meeting with a lot of agitated people[1] in order to "lower the mood" (sic). As stated in the Wikipedia article[2] this is probably one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqPMROclcM

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Shall_Overcome#Widespread_a...

alsetmusic2• 8 years ago

As stated in the Wikipedia article[2] this is probably one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics.

I checked the linked Wikipedia entry and it didn’t give any context for why this was such an embarrassment. I also searched Google for more info, but the English-only search results didn’t turn up anything useful. I gave up after the first five or so had nothing to add.

I’m curious if you can give a more detailed explanation of why this was such a gaffe. The limited info on this incident isn’t helping me paint a picture of the situation. As it stands, it seems to be a rather harmless request. I’m missing something significant, I think, about the delivery or tone.

Edit: I should clarify that I’m reading this at a time when I am not in a position to follow the YouTube link.

anigbrowl3• 8 years ago

As the attempted serial killer "Lasermannen" shot several immigrants around Stockholm in 1992, Prime Minister Carl Bildt and Immigration Minister Birgit Friggebo attended a meeting in Rinkeby. As the audience became upset, Friggebo tried to calm them down by proposing that everyone sing "We Shall Overcome." This statement is widely regarded as one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics.

Seems pretty obvious to me. Responding to a real political problem with an empty gesture of solidarity is everything people don't like about politicians.

amag2• 8 years ago

It's very much different from the times the song has been sung in the US by the civil rights movements. I understand it may be difficult without enough context. I'll try to add some.

Rinkeby is a district in Stockholm known for a high concentration of immigrants [1]. In the early nineties a murderer (called Lasermannen [2] due to using a laser sight on his gun) targeting random immigrants was at large in the area. People who lived there were understandably afraid and wanted to know what was being done to stop the shootings.

The prime minister at the time (Carl Bildt) and the immigration minister (Birgit Friggebo) goes to Rinkeby to try to calm the upset people and answer their questions. You need to understand that when they come they have bodyguards and the whole shebang. Normally they work in a nice building in the city center (regeringskansliet), live in a big house in a nice neighborhood or an apartment in the city center or something like that. They have nothing in common with the scared people in Rinkeby. It's not a social movement meeting. It's not a protest meeting. It's a someone-is-killing-us-HELP!! kind of meeting. The people in Rinkeby did not come to sing a song, or to protest or overcome injustice. They came because they were afraid that they would be the next victim and wanted the shooter caught!

It's in this context where Birgit Friggebo somehow gets her improvised "stroke of genius" and (quite forcibly) suggests that everyone sings "We Shall Overcome" as if she's a civil rights leader. She has no business suggesting such a thing! If you get the opportunity to watch the clip, check out the prime minister's reaction. He basically blurts out: "Hell No!"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinkeby [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ausonius

gribbly2• 8 years ago

Ahh, I had forgotten about that, that was so unexpected to be almost surreal.

Also the statement by Ines Uusmann (swedish minister of communications at the time) that 'internet is just a fad' is another 'classic' in swedish politics.

xorcist• 8 years ago

That was a headline written by the journalist, and not a statement she actually made. The interview is linked from her wikipedia article, and concerns that she thinks people will "spend less time" to "mindlessly surf" the Internet, i.e. that it will be overtaken by large businesses. You could probably argue that either way, but it's interesting to see that even contemporary history is written like the saying goes.

peterburkimsher2• 8 years ago

Non-paywalled link, anyone? (ironically)

upofadown• 8 years ago

Where is the settlement here? It was a court clarifying that some people didn't actually have the copyright they claimed.

‘We Shall Overcome’ Is Put in Public Domain in a Copyright Settlement

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