I have a dream... The MLK Estate and what is wrong with copyright

cynthetiq · Jan 16, 2012

Copyright King: Why the "I Have a Dream" Speech Still Isn't Free
Posted by Alex_Pasternack on Monday, Jan 16, 2012

Martin Luther King Jr.‘s “I Have a Dream” speech is considered one of the most recognizable collection of words in American history. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of a national treasure or a national park. The National Park Service inscribed it on the Lincoln Memorial and the Library of Congress put it into its National Recording Registry. So we might hold it to be self evident that it can be spread freely.

Not exactly. Any unauthorized usage of the speech and a number of other speeches by King – including in PBS documentaries – is a violation of American law. You’d be hard pressed to find a good complete video version on the web, and it’s not even to be found in the new digital archive of the King Center’s website. If you want to watch the whole thing, legally, you’ll need to get the $20 DVD.

That’s because the King estate, and, as of 2009, the British music publishing conglomerate EMI Publishing, owns the copyright of the speech and its recorded performance. While the copyright restriction isn’t news, EMI’s unusual role in policing the use of King’s words – the first instance of the company taking on a non-music based intellectual property catalog – hasn’t been widely reported. In November 2011, EMI Group was auctioned off, and the publishing business was sold to a consortium run by Sony Corp for $2.2 billion.

This complete “I Have a Dream” video was removed from YouTube, subject to a copyright claim by EMI publishing. A handful of poorer copies are still available, like this one.
The awkward tussle over MLK’s words bears recounting, especially given the ongoing controversy over SOPA, which targets copyright infringements on the Internet – and highlights all sorts of problems with our aging copyright system and general ignorance about how ideas actually spread in the digital age:

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.
Then, in 1999, a judge in Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc. 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 and had standing to sue CBS, which had used a portion of the speech in a 1994 documentary, “The 20th Century with Mike Wallace.”

The claim had been made before. In 1994, USA Today had paid the King estate $10,000 in attorney’s fees and court costs plus a $1,700 licensing fee after publishing the full speech without permission; the estate also sued the documentary producer Henry Hampton, alleging the unauthorized use of Dr. King’s image and words in the landmark 1987 public television series Eyes on the Prize.

Things get weirder. In 2000, Alcatel aired an ad with an excerpt of “I Have a Dream,” which it licensed from the King family. “When I saw that on TV, I could not believe I was seeing what I saw,” NAACP Chairman Julian Bond told 60 Minutes in 2001. “If Martin were alive, he and I would be meeting with Alcatel right now, saying, ‘How many blacks and women on your board?’” said the Rev. Joseph Lowry, who worked with Dr. King.

King himself donated proceeds from licensing the speech to fund the civil rights movement, and the King family has made similar pledges. But while legal scholars might defend the family’s legal right to King’s legacy — and few would argue with the family’s right to earn proceeds from that legacy — others focus on the larger, obvious point: whether or not King would have wanted his ideas used in advertising, he certainly wouldn’t have wanted them to be kept out of documentaries about the history of the civil rights movement, for instance.

“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.

In 2009, EMI Publishing became the administrator of the King copyright, after a deal the music publishing giant struck with the King family for an undisclosed sum. Given EMI’s hefty experience in policing copyright material on the web – it courted YouTube’s help early on, and recently won a million dollar suit over use of the Beatles catalog online – the deal was intended to better restrict the unlicensed distribution of King’s words, and to license them, for instance, for use in pop songs. (The Gregory Brothers, who applied autotune to an unlicensed snippet of King’s voice in a song they released in 2010, have since removed the video from YouTube, though another copy still exists.)

“His works are the expression of a man who helped to transform our society, and to this day his words continue to inspire the world,” EMI Chairman and CEO Roger Faxon told reporters at the time of the deal. “Assuring that Dr. King’s words are accorded the same protection and same right for compensation as other copyrights works is a profound responsibility, and we are proud of the confidence that the Estate has placed in us to fulfill that responsibility.”

Dexter King, then chairman of The King Estate, said EMI was best positioned to “increase The King Estate’s ability to preserve, perpetuate and protect the great legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.”
At the time of the deal, three years after the death of MLK Jr.‘s wife, Coretta Scott King, Bernice and Martin Luther King III were fighting Dexter in court over control of their parents’ estate. Martin Luther King III has since been named president of the King Center. I am waiting for comment from the King Center and EMI, as both are closed for Martin Luther King, Jr. day.
This copy of another famous speech by King, “The Drum Major Instinct” is no longer on YouTube, due to a copyright claim by EMI Publishing. Another copy can be found here.

What would King have made of all this, and of SOPA? I think he might have reframed the question, with a bit of poetry: how does ownership of ideas effect how we exist together in the world? How does the spread of ideas help push forward better understanding among men. What price are we willing to pay to keep ideas free? How do we decide who deserves access to ideas, who gets to build on them, and who gets to “own” them?

King might have noted, as an excellent On the Media report does, that his speech was not just divinely inspired, but a tribute to the communication of ideas – a kind of mash-up of rhetorical phrasings of other preachers and leaders of the time, along with an abundance of references to the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, and Shakespeare (“this sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn…” is a reference to Richard III). Even half of the “Dream” snippet in the Alcatel ad is mostly borrowed: We hold these truths to be self evident… “belongs” to Thomas Jefferson.

Whatever happens with SOPA, and the debate it’s begun about regulation of the Internet and the power of Hollywood, some very important questions remain about how we treat ideas. That debate won’t disappear anytime soon, and it shouldn’t. Meanwhile, “I Have a Dream” – delivered nearly 50 years ago, permanently installed in our cultural imagination – won’t really be free until the year 2038.

Read and listen to the speech at American Rhetoric. And whether or not you watch the whole thing, you can make a donation to the King Center here.
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One of my teammates works with the King Family from time to time. She has nothing but disdain for them because of the copyright choices they have made in the past and continue to make in the future.

I'm in the business of helping protect and pay authors/illustrators for their intellectual property. I get the idea of this but in many ways why couldn't the family have donated it to the Library of Congress or to the Smithsonian? They would have preserved his legacy just as well as any other organization. I believe that the King family wanted money more than preserving his legacy.

What do you think? How would you feel if one individual owned Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

ralphie250 · Jan 16, 2012

cynthetiq said: ↑

One of my teammates works with the King Family from time to time. She has nothing but disdain for them because of the copyright choices they have made in the past and continue to make in the future.

I'm in the business of helping protect and pay authors/illustrators for their intellectual property. I get the idea of this but in many ways why couldn't the family have donated it to the Library of Congress or to the Smithsonian? They would have preserved his legacy just as well as any other organization. I believe that the King family wanted money more than preserving his legacy.

What do you think? How would you feel if one individual owned Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?
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I agree its all about the money. I live close to atlanta and the kings are always in the news for something. I remember a year or two ago when the king center went bankrupt. Lots of people were mad at the family stating they had misused money, or were corrupt.

My own option is that the family is afraid they will miss out on money. Dr. King and his wife are both dead now and there are only 2 or 3 ( I think) children left. I don't see why they don't let the state handle the king center. Maybe it would get more visitors if they changed a few things, and. Be able to spread dr kings legacy throughout the world instead of trying to keep it in the state of Georgia. If im not mistaken reverend joseph lowery said it was a tragedy when it was going to go bankrupt. (If I remember correctly). Seems to me as if its all about the money.

Baraka_Guru · Jan 16, 2012

If it's a source of income, it has monetary value. Why give it away for the public good? Isn't that socialism?

But seriously: it's a source of income, and one cannot be expected to give that up. If the estate or owner is otherwise filthy rich, then maybe it would be an issue of greed. But still: you can't expect people to just give stuff away unless they're charitable in the first place.

It's like any other art in a way. You can't expect people to donate their privately owned artifacts or paintings to museums and galleries instead of selling them. That's something the fabulously rich do. That's what makes them fabulous rather than filthy.

cynthetiq · Jan 16, 2012

Baraka_Guru said: ↑

If it's a source of income, it has monetary value. Why give it away for the public good? Isn't that socialism?

But seriously: it's a source of income, and one cannot be expected to give that up. If the estate or owner is otherwise filthy rich, then maybe it would be an issue of greed. But still: you can't expect people to just give stuff away unless they're charitable in the first place.

It's like any other art in a way. You can't expect people to donate their privately owned artifacts or paintings to museums and galleries instead of selling them. That's something the fabulously rich do. That's what makes them fabulous rather than filthy.
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No doubt, rumor has it that when the US soldiers were in the Philippines, they ate up all the head of cattle that was owned by the family. When the US Government returned (not MacArthur) to settle the bill after the Philippines was liberated from the Japanese, my great grandfather said something like, "There is no charge." There's something that is greater than money, in the culture I grew up within it's called "utang na loob". I can't define it very well, but it's more like a debt of the heart.

Sometimes, it's as simple as that. One owes it to the community, not any single individual should benefit, but it should benefit everyone equally.

Charlatan · Jan 17, 2012

Copyright is a messy business... no question. I predict that things are going to get a lot worse, regarding copyright enforcement, before they get better.

Too many holders of copyright are fighting the future. Things have changed. Massively. And that change isn't finished happening. Things like SOPA are just the latest reaction to this change.

The truth of the matter is that old business models are crumbling and new ones are being born all over the place. Those fighting for copyright to remain as it always has, are just delaying the inevitable.

As for Dr. King's family... somethings are more important that a source of income. This might just be one of them.

ASU2003 · Jan 17, 2012

To quote Rage Against The Machine, "You don't have to burn the books, you just remove them." It is scary that EMI can 'own' this historic speech, and is willing to enforce it when used in historical documentaries. It is also a huge problem that it isn't on-line on YouTube or other websites.

I'm sorry, but copyright should end with the authors death, or 20 years later if they are killed/assassinated. Only if someone is making money from rebroadcasting or using the performances in the public domain should royalties be paid.

cynthetiq · Jan 17, 2012

ASU2003 said: ↑

To quote Rage Against The Machine, "You don't have to burn the books, you just remove them." It is scary that EMI can 'own' this historic speech, and is willing to enforce it when used in historical documentaries. It is also a huge problem that it isn't on-line on YouTube or other websites.

I'm sorry, but copyright should end with the authors death, or 20 years later if they are killed/assassinated. Only if someone is making money from rebroadcasting or using the performances in the public domain should royalties be paid.
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Why is it? How is it different from any other performance by an artist, poet, author? My friend was at Woodstock, he has some rare footage of Hendrix and other performers that no one else has, it's "never before seen." It's historic. It was game changing. Why is that different?

greywolf · Jan 18, 2012

Copyright was never intended to keep things out of the hands of the masses. It wasn't intended as a means of keeping an author's work as a future source of income for him. The content was supposed to do that in that people who wanted to know of his work would buy their own copy. Until the advent of mass/digital copying, this was evident with libraries, designed to help share works with people who could not afford their own copy.

Now, copyright is seen as a financial/control instrument, and has been absolutely corrupted from the original intent. The King family dishonours this man by not trying to get copies of his dream in the hands of every person in the world, and restricting access to the images of his incredibly powerful speech as recorded. It's as much about control as it is about money; it is NOT about him, or his legacy.

God help us when scientists start copyrighting their research so that you can't even use that to extend it without their permission. Oh wait... that's happening now, too, isn't it?

ralphie250 · Jan 18, 2012

I herd on the radio this morning that mlk3 resigned from the king center. Bernice king will take over.

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