Copyright King: Why the "I Have a Dream" Speech Still Isn't Free

http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/1/16/copyright-king-why-the-i-have-a-dream-speech-still-isn-t-free

by ck2 • 15 years ago

281 115 15 years ago

motherboard.vice.com

ck27• 15 years ago

I slightly corrected the title as Sony bought part of the EMI Group, not the other way around.

Sorry if it makes less sense now but the article is a worthy read.

In a nutshell, you won't be able to watch the video for free until 2038 in the USA

scq• 15 years ago

And that's if they don't keep extending the copyright term.

brudgers7• 15 years ago

Unsurprisingly, my public library has a copy. For twenty bucks you can donate a copy to yours.

ck27• 15 years ago

It's also on Netflix but not Instant Watch

http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-I-Have...

twodayslate• 15 years ago

How can you copyright that? If it is, it should be under creative commons.

sp3329• 15 years ago

In the USA (and most other jurisdictions, really) as soon as you write it down, you have the copyright on it. You also have some control over "derivative works" including any copies of the "performance" of the speech. In music, for example, you would need to pay royalties to the songwriter for publicly playing a recording of their song, no matter who actually sang the song.

ck27• 15 years ago

I'm kind of surprised congress didn't try to retroactively copyright the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address and force textbook publishers to pay royalties.

pbhjpbhj• 15 years ago

USA was just about the last place to accede to the international treaties on copyright, wherein copyright is granted at the time of creation of 'a work'. You don't have to fix the work in any particular medium to gain copyright - an expressive, creative mime could be a copyright work; or just a tune you whistled, or a cake, or ...

spacemanaki2• 15 years ago

Well, the article actually explains how it was copyrighted. Basically the King estate sued CBS and the court determined they had a claim.

"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 ..... the judge determined that the speech was a performance distributed to the news media and not the public, making it a “limited” as opposed to a “general” publication. That meant the speech, like other “performances” on CBS, was not in the public domain. That meant the King estate had the right to claim copyright"

This is relatively readable: http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/19989079.MAN.pdf

Maro• 15 years ago

So it really started with Martin Luther King's descendants disgracing his heritage.

riffic• 15 years ago

Creative Commons didn't exist in the 1960s

godDLL• 15 years ago

I think this is the first time I see YouTube embeds used this way. The article contains several of them -- non-functional and displaying a "removed due to third party copyright claim" message -- all to drive the article's point.

VMG• 15 years ago

I can still see the alcatel ad in germany

burgerbrain8• 15 years ago

"Alcatel aired an ad with an excerpt of “I Have a Dream,” which it licensed from the King family for an undisclosed sum."

They made money off of that one.

Create• 15 years ago

"I Have A Dream" is nothing compared to the Riverside speech, and its anniversary.

https://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/21/dr_martin_luther_king...

ck27• 15 years ago

Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,"

Yikes. He really was a progressive leader. Makes you wonder in perspective how we are going to someday see people for supporting Gitmo or giving gays "some rights" but not all rights.

spodek2• 15 years ago

Media today always talk about King's work on civil rights and equality work and show "I Have A Dream" footage and talk about his assassination.

They don't show the five years between, despite his greater experience, awareness, and maturity. In those years he took on greater issues of a system that created so much poverty and created war.

I think they don't cover those years because those issues remain and would force them to take on current issues they don't want to. Since his earlier work is better publicized, I find learning about his later work teach me more about him, his work, those issues, and leadership. The Riverside Church speech against the war in Vietnam was an incredibly courageous speech I consider right on, displaying mastery of the issues, his audience, oratory, ... basically every element of leadership.

Chris_Newton• 15 years ago

> Makes you wonder in perspective how we are going to someday see people for supporting Gitmo or giving gays "some rights" but not all rights.

I think most of us know the answer to that question.

Sadly, history will also record that the ruling class of our age often acted to benefit their own self-serving interests, just like the ruling class of every age before us. We call them politicians and corporate executives rather than royalty and nobility, and we call ourselves middle class or working class rather than serfs or slaves, but the balance of power isn't so very different when you get right down to it.

The really insidious thing about our age, though, is that a significant fraction of the injustices are impersonal. People become victims of the The System, where no individual has ever personally chosen to harm them, yet harmed they are all the same. Even if the rich and powerful want to change The System for the better, it can be difficult for them to do so because of perceived consequences in terms of social norms or political fall-out. That in turn is partly because of the mistrust that has built up between the working classes and the ruling class, and the resulting apathy among (in a democratic set-up) the voters.

The remarkable thing about people like Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks was that they stood up and followed their beliefs despite the risks. That is why they are remembered as heroes. It's a shame that The System today has evolved, probably inadvertently, so that it's almost impossible for such heroes ever to reach positions of real power now. Blame it on the political machine, the military-industrial complex, media empires, or whatever you like; they're just different sides of the same problem.

Perhaps one day, history will record that a real leader did make it to the top against the odds, and they made statements of substance and honesty, and they adopted policies of justice and fairness, and they fought for causes worth fighting for, and that was when the damage of the past few years started to be undone. We can but hope.

brudgers7• 15 years ago

Dr. King was not a public official and was not giving testimony. His speech is no more a candidate for the public domain than the Beach Boys' Fourth of July, 1980 rendition of Barbara Ann on the National Mall is.

ck27• 15 years ago

A reasonable argument. But 2038? What about taking the artists original intentions and desires in mind?

Would MLK want people to pay $20 to watch his speech?

sp3329• 15 years ago

"Intentions" don't mean much if they're not in writing. MLK could have put the speech under a freer license if he wanted to.

monochromatic6• 15 years ago

If he intended the speech to be in the public domain, he would have put it in the public domain... either during his life, or via his will. That fact that he didn't says more about his intentions than any of our after-the-fact speculation.

spacemanaki2• 15 years ago

IANAL, etc. but I believe this isn't exactly as cut and dried as you make it out to be, or at least wasn't as cut and dried when the King estate took it to court. The legal analysis section on Wikipedia^ describes the difference between "general" and "limited" publication, and that if it was a general publication the estate would not have a copyright claim.

Can anyone with more knowledge of copyright law explain this? Are televised speeches usually public domain?

^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estate_of_Martin_Luther_King,_J...

brudgers7• 15 years ago

[IANAL either] My understanding is that the difference between general and limited publication was important under the Copyright Act of 1909, and that to a great extent it required registration of works in order for the work to enjoy protection. The Copyright Act of 1976, changed the requirements for protection and essentially works are automatically protected when they are published.

chernevik• 15 years ago

Right. Because "Barbara Ann" was a key moment in the American reconsideration of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Civil War. "Barbara Ann" and "I Have A Dream" are equally important to an understanding of equality in America.

Got it.

spodek2• 15 years ago

The article mostly covers the relevant law and how the copyright ownership has evolved.

I kept thinking about what we could do now. I doubt the copyright owner thinks about copyright laws like we do -- freedom, culture evolving, etc. Other posts on this thread say "Martin Luther King's descendants ... are disgracing the man's heritage," they probably don't know our perspective. They haven't read The Right to Read -- http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html. They probably intend to keep others from messing it up.

Instead of insulting them, we might try to educate them on our perspective and see if they might be persuaded to release it under the GPL or something similar. If Sony has it, they may be unwilling to change, but maybe the family?

If an inflexible conglomerate already has it, what can we learn from them about getting the owners of rights to culturally important copyrighted works first? There are more of us. Why did they get there first? How can we do better next time?

I want copyright law changed, but in the meantime, this work and many like it could be GPL'ed. Why don't we make that happen?

JS_startup• 15 years ago

MLK's descendants have turned his speech and legacy into a commodity, sued each other, stolen money from his estate and setup businesses solely for capitalizing on the speech.

Something tells me they would not be interested in releasing the speech under the GPL.

Newgy• 15 years ago

Yeah, MLK's family has been unusually greedy. They even used copyright to demand money during the building of the MLK Memorial!

http://savannahnow.com/stories/102501/LOCmlkmemory.shtml

jonnathanson3• 15 years ago

FWIW, King's speech contains close to 40% repurposed or borrowed material (from the Declaration of Independence, the song "My Country 'Tis of Thee," cribs from previous speeches by Archibald Carey, etc.). I say this not to diminish the accomplishment, triumph, or historical significance of Dr. King's famous speech, but rather, to raise the point that it's a very nuanced copyright matter.

Am I allowed to copyright a work derived from a collage of other people's works? If I incorporated one of your posts into a blog post of mine, could I copyright the entirety of the blog post?

According to the letter of the law, King's estate should have been entitled only to copyright the portions of the "I Have a Dream" speech that contained 100% original material [1]. Yet these are not the most recognizable or famous portions of the speech, and they're not the portions King's estate has often licensed out to advertisers, etc. Almost all of the words most famously associated with the "I Have a Dream" speech are borrowed from other source material. And, unless I'm missing something -- I'm not a lawyer, so that's possible -- they should not have been granted to King's estate in the first place. Perhaps the current laws on the books took effect after that granting?

[1]From 17 U.S.C. SS 103(b): "The copyright in a compilation or derivative work extends only to the material contributed by the author of such work, as distinguished from the preexisting material employed in the work, and does not imply any exclusive right in the preexisting material. The copyright in such work is independent of, and does not affect or enlarge the scope, duration, ownership, or subsistence of, any copyright protection in the preexisting material."

Symmetry• 15 years ago

That's "Does not imply any _exclusive_ right to the preexisting materiel". The entire derived work is still copyrighted to the extent that the author exercised creative judgement while composing or arranging it, whether or not all the components are copyrighted independently[1]. The law you quoted just says that you don't suddenly acquire copyright on the components you used in creating your work.

[1] IANAL

EDIT: s/That/That's/

loumf• 15 years ago

Two of those citations were in the public domain -- I don't know Carey, but does cribbing means wholesale copying or similar sentiment? If he says the "same thing" as Carey but in his own words, then it's a new work.

moldbug4• 15 years ago

Ironically, MLK was not the actual author of the "Dream" speech, which was written by King's regular speechwriters, Stanley Levison and Clarence B. Jones.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_a_Dream#Speech_title_and...).

It's an interesting comment on our society that it prefers to attribute this type of artistic work to the performer, rather than the actual writer. Perhaps future generations will see MLK simply as the man who read Stanley Levison's great speeches, or Obama as the actor who brought Jon Favreau alive. We give props to Yo-Yo Ma for a great performance of Bach, too, but we don't talk about "Ma's fugue." And there's a very well-developed system for distinguishing between composition and performance copyrights...

cynicalkane• 15 years ago

A lawyer or copyright expert can correct me if I'm wrong, but a sufficiently novel use of public work, or fair use of private work, can be copyrighted. So the original source material doesn't belong to the King estate, but its use in the context of the speech does.

If I make a collage of other people's works, the other works still belong to them, but the way I put them together belongs to me. Actually, this doesn't seem terribly "nuanced".

gwern• 15 years ago

> Instead of insulting them, we might try to educate them on our perspective and see if they might be persuaded to release it under the GPL or something similar. If Sony has it, they may be unwilling to change, but maybe the family?

Ahahaha. No, you would have better luck persuading Sony than the family. The family is very clear: MLK is a goldmine they will exploit as much as possible. This is the same family that has so far made somewhere around a million dollars in licensing and consulting fees from the DC memorial (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._Memori...).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._Memori...

brudgers7• 15 years ago

The author's argument appears to be that Dr. King's speech is too important to be protected by copyright. The author provides very little to support this position other than an appeal to emotion.

Lacking support with relevant facts, details, and rationales, the argument is, for me, entirely unpersuasive.

Although I am certainly not an expert on the history of Civil Rights in the 1960's, I was curious as to who Bill Rutherford was and what he did. Before I found much I came across the source from which the author lifted:

>“I think Martin Luther King must be spinning in his grave,” Bill Rutherford, who was executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference when King was murdered, told 60 Minutes. “He gave his life for his ideas of justice, peace and love. He attempted his entire life to communicate ideas for free. To communicate, not to sell,” he says.

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-319500.html

brown9-2• 15 years ago

I don't get it - what facts and details can someone supply to make the argument that this speech is very important to the public and to history?

What about mentioning how often the speech is cited, how common place phrases from it are, etc.?

monochromatic6• 15 years ago

Nobody's disputing that it's important to the public and to history. The point of contention is whether that implies that it should be un-copyrightable. I'm with brudgers--nothing in this article gives any justification for that proposition.

brudgers7• 15 years ago

The author's unsupported argument is that the importance of the speech should trump copyright protection.

Then again, for the author, it appears that the CBS news story is also of that level of importance.

tpatke• 15 years ago

Makes me wonder how may of Apple's Think Different personalities were paid for their "endorsement".

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different

snowwrestler• 15 years ago

I would bet a lot of money that every single one of those photos and video clips was properly licensed by Apple. It's not even that complicated a commercial for that sort of thing--compare to the first iPhone ad, which probably had 2-3 times as many copyrighted clips:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nyYloJyq9M

e28eta• 15 years ago

I just finished reading the Jobs biography, and I believe you're correct. Isaacson writes about Steve personally calling the editor in chief of Time Inc to get the famous picture of Gandhi which isn't available for commercial use, and meeting with Yoko Ono to get the pic of Lennon.

rthomas6• 15 years ago

Does this mean that one could be convicted of a felony under SOPA/PIPA if they posted a video of the speech online?

billpatrianakos4• 15 years ago

This is interesting on a number of levels. I'm part of the minority around here that is in favor of copyright but don't write me off as a knee-jerk reaction to my stance.

An article like this could easily become a rallying cry for abolishing copyright but when you dig deeper it really doesn't lend itself to total copyright abolishment as much as you'd think.

It's interesting when you bear in mind that Dr. Martin Luther King held copyright on this speech and used the copyright laws to control how his speech was used. The way he wielded the power afforded to him by copyright is a great argument for copyright, not against it! If we make some conservative assumptions based on his actions and what we know of the man then it's safe to say he would allow the speech to become part of PBS documentaries but not used in corporate advertisements. Isnt it fair to believe that most of us these days would agree that his Dream speech be used in historical documentaries and other works that promote his legacy but be upset if we saw that speech used in a Nike commercial?

What I'm getting at here is that copyright itself isn't bad. It's how it is used that can be harmful but not always. Using copyright to keep MLK's legacy from being sullied is a legitimate and reasonable use for copyright. This particular case reminds us that copyright can be used for good too. If we fast forward to today and consider the King estate's attempt to make money from Dr. King's legacy we see what I'd call a gray area. Not everyone would want to see money being made in MLK's name. But far more people don't want to see the right to his words and likeness belonging to a corporation like EMI.

I want to encourage all of us to take a less extreme, more balanced perspective on this. Laws like SOPA/PIPA have backed us into a corner where we're forced to take extreme positions against extreme laws but here amongst friends, why not discuss this in a balanced way and save the extremism for fighting those with equally extreme stances on the other side? I do support copyright but I don't support it in its entirety. This story is a prime example of why the length of copyright needs to be limited. But this isn't only about copyright. We forget that other US laws in combination with copyright are what cause some of the trouble. Corporations should not be considered people. I think taking a stance that promotes complete abolishment of copyright is like chopping off your head to cure a headache.

The "I Have a Dream" speech should be in the public domain by now, there's no question about it. Copyright has hurt us in this case but while Dr. King was alive it had every opportunity to help us. It could have ensured that his speech wasn't taken advantage of. We seem to forget that copyright helps us promote freedom just as much as it can be used to restrict it. It can help ensure not just freedom as in liberty but freedom as in gratis, for free, free beer, pay zero moneys. We can't stop people from using copyright in ways we don't approve of without abolishing it but abolishing it opens another can of worms. So instead let's focus on trying to make copyright a little more sane, less biased, by scaling it back instead of ripping out our hearts to cure high cholesterol (I didn't want to use the chopping heads to cure headaches metaphor again, hopefully that wasn't too awkward a metaphor).

serge2k• 15 years ago

I don't disagree with copyright in general. I do disagree with the idea that it should extend beyond death.

You write something it should be protected for life, but thats it. Anything else is unreasonable.

stan_rogers• 15 years ago

Believe it or not, publishers (and galleries) used to make extensive use of the simple expedient of waiting for the creator of a work to die (often leaving the family/estate without the means for a burial), which is why the posthumous extension exists at all. Mind you, it has grown from the reasonable protection it once was (something on the order of a dozen or twenty years, depending on the jurisdiction -- enough to inconvenience the vultures or to provide a modest widow's pension) to something utterly ridiculous.

sehugg• 15 years ago

I don't think the majority here advocates abolishing copyright (although a poll would clear that up). Many of us make their living due in part to copyright protections, nor do I think a sane person would think it could be abolished unless society changes radically.

I think many of us object to copyright extremism, as you point out. Dr. King certainly would never have guessed that someone could be extradited from another country to face jail time for publishing a link to an unauthorized copy of his speech. Yet here we are.

billpatrianakos4• 15 years ago

I think the majority here does favor copyright abolishment. I would hope I'm wrong but whenever the the subject of copyright comes up the vast majority of the comments talk about how we need to get rid of it, how all works should be free and in the public domain, etc. Especially when you bring money into the discussion I've seen everyone say that copyright is no longer necessary or helpful and we all need to find a way to make a living without it implying that creators should have no right to restrict how their works are used or distributed. I'm so glad this article was posted because it shows us the benefits of copyright.

I'm often downvoted to hell for comments like the one above and I'm really surprised its getting a positive response. Maybe a different subset of HN is discussing it. I don't hold an extreme position on this at all but I'm often a little afraid to speak my mind on this as I usually get a very negative response.

Also, many of us really do make a living thanks in part to copyright protections and to reiterate, I usually see and am responded to with comments saying that we shouldn't use copyright like that and should find another way. But not all works like that lend themselves well to models like paid support for free software or live performances instead of paid recordings.

Anyway, I'm relieved to see that people around here do see the validity of my argument.

Lagged2Death2• 15 years ago

If we make some conservative assumptions based on his actions and what we know of the man then it's safe to say he would allow the speech to become part of PBS documentaries but not used in corporate advertisements.

King's speeches are used in corporate ads. Did you watch the embedded videos?

Likeness rights, not copyrights, are what prevent the images of public figures from being used commercially in ways that imply endorsement. If I take a photo of the President (or any other famous person, in public or in private), I own the copyright for that photo. I can sell copies of it for a profit. But it can't be used in a way that implies endorsement. I need a model release for that.

I'm not a lawyer, but I believe it would be perfectly legally possible for the King estate to release all aspects of the speech into the public domain and still prohibit the use of King's image or voice in advertisements. Or it would have been.

billpatrianakos4• 15 years ago

I did see the videos, I know they are used in ads. I knew without watching any online videos as I've seen them on live TV. What I'm saying is that if he were alive today we could safely assume he wouldn't have allowed such advertisements to be made. Part of what I'm saying requires us to imagine what would have happened had Dr. King not died as it relates to copyright. He could have exercised the powers afforded to him by copyright to combat some of the uses of his speech the author talks about.

Lagged2Death2• 15 years ago

I wonder what legal contortions were necessary to argue that "the speech was a performance distributed to the news media and not the public." That's some of the purest baloney I've ever heard. If giving a speech to a fifth of a million people on the steps of one of the most famous public monuments in the world, in one of the most famous public spaces in the world, doesn't count as "public," what possibly could?

Maybe the "not the public" summation is a poor one.

I've often thought it would be beneficial to the cause of history and governmental transparency to get more videos, recordings, and photographs of our important leaders (presidential candidates, et al) into the public domain. I had thought it was something a non-profit, a quasi-governmental corporation like PBS, or a governmental department could organize. But I don't know how copyright law interacts with public performances (obviously).

giardini• 15 years ago

That's alright. No one wants to hear the whole speech anyway - too boring and dated.

The great part ("I have a dream...") of the speech is available everywhere without paying. It's the truly memorable part of the speech. In fact, I'd bet that 99% who have heard of the speech have heard only that part of the speech.

Copyright King: Why the "I Have a Dream" Speech Still Isn't Free

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