martin luther king jr. – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Among the most powerful moments of Selma, the new film about the march Martin Luther King, Jr. led in 1965 in support of voting rights for African Americans, are the speeches, sermons, and eulogies King delivered during that tumultuous period. However, the speeches performed by actor David Oyelowo in the film do not contain the actual words spoken by King. This is because the King estate would not license the copyright in the speeches to filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Thus, the King estate’s aggressive stance on copyright has literally forced the re-writing of history.

According to the Washington Post, the King estate licensed the film rights to King’s speeches to DreamWorks, with Steven Spielberg producing any resulting films. DuVernay said that she never even asked for the rights to King’s speeches “because we knew those rights are already gone, they’re with Spielberg.” She added that she knew that there were strings attached to the rights: “with those rights came a certain collaboration.” In other words, the King estate uses its control over the copyright to control how King is portrayed. The Post article suggests that this control has prevented the making of a feature film about King?until now.

In the summer of 2013, when the nation was commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the King estate refused to allow broadcasts of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. At the time, I wrote a blog post questioning the policy justification for one of the most important speeches in American history remaining under copyright 50 years after its delivery, and 45 years after the death of its author. I argued that King did not need the economic incentive provided by copyright protection to write the speech or deliver it so compellingly. I further asserted that copyright protection was not necessary to ensure that the speech remained in distribution 50 years after the March on Washington. I also responded to the argument that royalties from King’s speech have financed the work of the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation promoting civil rights and social justice by noting that funding valuable institutions is not the purpose of copyright. Additionally, the cause of civil rights arguably could be better advanced by the broadest possible dissemination of his speech, rather than by exploiting it to generate revenue for the Foundation.

The same arguments can be made with respect to King’s speeches surrounding the march in Selma. King obviously was not motivated by financial gain when he wrote those speeches. Further, copyright protection was not necessary to ensure that the speeches remained available in the decades since. To the contrary, copyright protection prevented the derivative use of those speeches in the film, thereby potentially depriving new audiences of King’s message.

The _Washington Post_‘s review of Selma suggests that the director Ava DuVernay made a virtue of necessity in response to her inability to secure the rights to the speeches:

“in a brilliant work-around DuVernay approximates [King’s] words, allowing viewers to focus on their meaning rather than how literally Oyelowo reproduces them.” Likewise, the New York Times’ review observes that DuVernay turned her lack of permission to use the speeches into “a chance to see and hear [King] afresh.” In the film, King is “less an orator than an organizer” and is “a man trying to navigate his public role, his private life, and the expectations of his allies and friends.”

Proponents of long copyright term might point to these reviews as proof of the copyright system working properly. Denied the ability to quote King directly, DuVernay was forced to create her own expression?paraphrases of King’s speeches?and her own interpretation of King’s life.

At the same time, the Times recognizes that the inability to quote King directly “may be a blow to the film’s authenticity.” And this is a serious problem, particularly in a world where people are far more likely to learn history from a biopic than from a textbook. The director of a biopic already must compress complex events that unfolded over months (in the case of Selma) or years (in the case of the Alan Turing biopic, The Imitation Game) into two hours. The director must also add dramatic tension in order to sustain audience interest. (For example, Joe Califano, then a member of the Johnson Administration, has accused DuVernay of falsely portraying a series of conflicts between Johnson and King over voting rights, when in fact they agreed with the both the strategy and the tactics for achieving this objective.) The inaccuracies created by this compression and invented dramatic tension should not be compounded by concerns of potential copyright infringement liability.

Fair use is the obvious solution to the problem of copyright constraining the presentation of historical events. In Bouchat v. Baltimore Ravens, discussed in this post, the Fourth Circuit found the National Football League’s use of the “Flying B” logo in highlight films to be transformative because the logo was used “as part of the historical record to tell stories of past drafts, major events in Ravens history, and player careers.”

The court further stated:

“Were we to require those wishing to produce films and documentaries to receive permission from copyright holders for fleeting factual uses of their works, we would allow those copyright holders to exert enormous influence over new depictions of historical subjects and events. Such a rule would encourage bargaining over the depiction of history by granting copyright holders substantial leverage over select historical facts.”

Similarly, in Fox News Network v. TVEyes, discussed in this post, the court concluded that TVEyes’ inclusion of clips in a search engine for broadcast television was a transformative use. The court found that “TVEyes’ message, ?this is what they said’?is a very different message from Fox News’??this is what you should know or believe.'”

The primary purpose of including King’s speeches in the film Selma would be to inform its viewers of what King said and the impact it had on his audience. Although Ava DuVernay almost certainly believed in what King said, and wanted her viewers to believe it too, that purpose would be secondary to educating her viewers about King and his impact on the course of history.

Based on TVEyes and Bouchat, DuVernay would have had a strong fair use defense had she used King’s actual words rather than just paraphrased them. Perhaps she (or her lawyers) decided that historical accuracy was not worth the risk of litigation with the King estate. While it appears that DuVernay remained true to both the style and content of King’s speeches, the next director might not be so scrupulous. Indeed, an inept paraphrase of one of King’s speeches at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., made him sound, according to Maya Angelou, “like an arrogant twit.” The paraphrase subsequently was removed.

The paraphrasing of Martin Luther King, Jr. puts us on the slippery slope to truthiness. The King estate should be far more worried about people paraphrasing King than quoting him accurately.

Reposted from the Disruptive Competition Project

Filed Under: ava duvernay, copyright, culture, fair use, history, martin luther king jr., mlk estate, paraphrasing, selma, speeches

Harry Belafonte Sues Martin Luther King Jr.'s Heirs In Yet Another Fight Over 'Ownership' Of His Words

from the sued-at-last,-sued-at-least... dept

We’ve covered how Martin Luther King Jr.’s heirs have a long and unfortunate history of being over-aggressive enforcers of the intellectual property of their father — not for the good of society and civil rights, but rather for revenue maximization. At times it’s reached ridiculous levels, and the latest is that the famed singer Harry Belafonte is now suing MLK’s heirs after they’ve spent years blocking his attempt to sell (for charity) some documents that Belafonte received from King and King’s wife. King’s heirs argue that Belafonte got these documents through questionable means and they belong to the estate. The details suggest, yet again, that this is just yet another fight where the King heirs are so focused on ownership that they don’t seem to care about anything else.

Mr. Belafonte, who often supported the King family financially during the civil rights struggle, said the dispute pains him. He said in his view, Dr. King’s children had drifted away from their father’s values. “The papers are symbolic,” he said. “It’s really about what happened to the children, and I feel that somewhere, in this one area, I really failed Martin.”

Of course, what isn’t clearly delineated in the NYT article about all this is the difference between ownership of the documents and the holding the copyright on the contents. Late in the article, a lawyer claims it’s about the copyright:

Clarence B. Jones, Dr. King’s lawyer and close friend, said the King family had every right to protect its copyright.

However, it doesn’t seem like this fight has anything to do with copyright at all. After all, the copyright doesn’t change hands with the letter (and the King estate almost certainly doesn’t hold the copyright in the letter from President Lyndon B. Johnson to Mrs. King, which is included in the documents they’re fighting over). Furthermore, even if Belafonte had the documents that included works that were potentially covered by copyright for King, the copyright would still remain with the King estate, but Belafonte could still sell the physical documents under the first sale doctrine.

That said, given how aggressive the King estate has been over copyright as well as physical ownership of documents (they went after Boston University to get back a trove of documents King had directly donated to the school), it shows yet again how copyright is a tool that is used all too often for control, rather than for “the progress of science” as prescribed by the Constitution.

Filed Under: harry belafonte, letters, martin luther king jr., mlk, ownership

MLK Jr.'s Sons Celebrate 50th Anniversary Of 'I Have A Dream' By Suing His Daughter

from the making-dad-proud-the-only-way-they-know-how dept

Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, a dream that one day his sons would sue his daughter over the control of his body of work — and on the fiftieth anniversary of his famous speech. As he boldly stated 50 years ago, the only way to ensure racial harmony is through familial infighting.

If Dr. King were alive today, along with having to offer his opinion on Miley Cyrus, he’d be shocked to hear his famous speech paraphrased this way — and his legacy being handled in this fashion. He would also likely be astonished that each anniversary of his speech is marked by vanishing Youtube videos and the arrival of DMCA notices and cease and desist orders.

But that’s what we have, thanks to his legacy being “safeguarded” by siblings who sue each other.

In a lawsuit filed Aug. 28 in Fulton County Court, the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc. — run by King’s sons, Martin Luther King III and Dexter King — claims it licensed the civil rights activist’s intellectual property rights to The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in March 2009.

The King Center’s CEO is Bernice King, the youngest child of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated in 1968.

Dr. King’s estate claims it supports the center’s mission to maintain King’s legacy and has been the nonprofit’s single largest individual donor for the past decade.

“Supports it,” but only up to a point, apparently. Not that Bernice King is exactly blameless.

[I]t says the center has been careless with Dr. King’s intellectual property, which includes the leader’s “name, image, recorded voice and memorabilia,” along with “all works of authorship … including writings, speeches, sermons, letters and copyrights,” trademark interests, and “the remains and coffin contained within the crypt of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

The estate says it conducted an audit in April, which “revealed that the current manner of care and storage of the physical property by defendant is unacceptable.” It claims the items are “susceptible to damage by fire, water, mold, and mildew, as well as theft.”

King’s sons say they tried to work with their sister to fix the problems, but the relationship “has recently become strained, resulting in a total breakdown in communication and transparency.”

So, on one hand, we have King’s estate, which has never missed an opportunity to capitalize on the “I have a dream” speech and, on the other, someone who clearly doesn’t value what they have. If nothing else, Bernice King should put her soon-to-be-gone collection the hands of people (other than her siblings) who know the value of returning certain “property” to the public. (Perhaps someone like this history professor🙂

And King’s estate holders need to return a speech given publicly back to public and stop turning this momentuous event into nothing more than a series of transactions. His sons have to have some idea of how the public views their mercenary exploits. They can’t be that obtuse, can they? Or do they think their father would be proud to know his voice and likeness is more likely to be used to emancipate people from lousy wireless service than to be spread throughout the internet in order to inspire new generations of Americans?

Filed Under: copyright, i have a dream, lawsuits, martin luther king jr.

Let Freedom Ka-Ching! On The 50th Anniversary Of 'I Have A Dream,' AT&T Can Use The Speech To Sell Phones, But You Can't Post It

from the belongs-in-the-public-domain dept

As you hopefully are aware, today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s powerful, moving and memorable I have a dream… speech. In a just world, that speech would be in the public domain. And, legally, it might be. While King did apparently send a copy of the speech to the Copyright Office, he did so as an “unpublished work.” There has been a dispute, then, about the speech itself, since that would be a publication. His estate, however, has argued that the speech was not a “general publication,” but rather a “limited publication” and thus King retained a common law copyright — and an appeals court appeared to agree, but the lawsuit over this was settled without a final ruling, and no one has challenged it since. However, King’s estate has been ridiculously aggressive in trying to lock up his speeches and take down videos commemorating his talks, with a focus on this momentous speech.

Of course, they’re more than happy to license the speech to the highest bidder — which is why the speech has been used to sell cars and mobile phone service — but if you were to post it yourself to share it and honor his memory, expect a DMCA takedown. This should bother you. The speech and the legacy of Dr. King are not available for you and I to use, but giant telcos can pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. While there’s a strong fair use argument that the speech can be used as “a historical artifact” in such situations as today, very few people feel like testing that theory in court.

Law professor James Boyle finds the whole situation quite ridiculous, and has expressed his dismay with the fact that this speech is now tied to commercialism, rather than for the celebration of civil rights. In response, he’s penned a “revised” version of the speech, entitled, (EM)I Has A Dream in honor of the fact that the King family has partnered with EMI to “administer” the copyright on the speech. The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s a snippet:

Five tens of years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, wrote this speech. This momentous oratory came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of African-Americans. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. Fifty years later, that speech still is not free. Fifty years later, the life of the speech is still sadly crippled by the manacles of corporate ownership and the chains of take-down letters. Fifty years later, the speech lives on a lonely island of property rights in the midst of a vast ocean of the culture it influenced. And I say, let freedom ring. Not the chirpy ring of the Cingular wireless phone his words were actually used to advertise, but the idea of freedom for which he stood.

And when this happens, and 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 actually use the words of this speech.

Then, and only then, we will be able to say, “We have a dream. And no one owns it. Free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Today should be a day on which we celebrate this speech. It’s a depressing statement of the state of copyright law that doing so in the most appropriate way may actually be against the law.

Filed Under: commercialism, copyright, historical artifacts, i have a dream, martin luther king jr., public domain

Civil Rights Leader And Congressman John Lewis Says Ed Snowden Latest In The Line From Thoreau To Gandhi To King

from the nsa-defenders-losing-the-battle dept

Civil rights leader, and current Congressman John Lewis, is now speaking out strongly in support of Ed Snowden:

Asked in interview with the Guardian whether Snowden was engaged in an act of civil disobedience, Lewis nodded and replied: “In keeping with the philosophy and the discipline of non-violence, in keeping with the teaching of Henry David Thoreau and people like Gandhi and others, if you believe something that is not right, something is unjust, and you are willing to defy customs, traditions, bad laws, then you have a conscience. You have a right to defy those laws and be willing to pay the price.”

“That is what we did,” he added. “I got arrested 40 times during the sixties. Since I’ve been in Congress I’ve been arrested four times. Sometimes you have to act by the dictates of your conscience. You have to do it.”

Later in the conversation, he notes how worrisome the surveillance program is, and relates it back to how the government treated Martin Luther King Jr. (with whom Lewis worked closely), using overly aggressive surveillance techniques to try to destroy activists and protest groups. As public perception seems to keep growing in support of Snowden, the defenders of the NSA program who are attacking Snowden are going to look increasingly isolated and out of touch.

Filed Under: civil liberties, civil rights, ed snowden, gandhi, john lewis, martin luther king jr.

Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' Video Taken Down On Internet Freedom Day

from the more-like-a-nightmare dept

We’ve been talking a lot today about Internet Freedom Day, and the anniversary of the SOPA/PIPA blackout. The folks at Fight for the Future noticed the proximity of Internet Freedom Day to Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and decided an interesting form of celebrating internet freedom would be to share a video of MLK’s famous “I have a dream…” speech. As you may or may not know, Martin Luther King Jr.’s heirs have been ridiculously aggressive in claiming copyright over every aspect of anything related to MLK — and they seek large sums of money from people for doing things like quoting him. When the MLK Memorial was recently built in Washington DC, the family was able to get nearly $800,000 just to use his words and likeness.

The FftF video was not just the MLK video, but contained some additional explanation of how expanding copyright laws could impact people for doing something as simple as sharing the MLK video — and then it included some of the speech. So I guess it should come as little surprise that the “I have a dream…” video that FftF was urging people to share has already been taken down (it’s unclear if the takedown was due to a notice or Vimeo being proactive).

It seems fairly ridiculous that on Internet Freedom Day, and just before MLK Day, we’re still dealing with takedowns on such powerful words.

Filed Under: copyright, fight for the future, i have a dream, internet freedom, martin luther king jr., takedowns

How IP Laws Have Locked Up Martin Luther King's Brilliance

from the sadness dept

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day — and there are many reasons to celebrate his legacy. But one thing that should not be celebrated is what his heirs have done with his words ever since. In the past, we’ve discussed how his heirs have done everything they can to try to use intellectual property laws to lock up MLK Jr.’s legacy — and set up a toll booth to charge anyone for making use of them in any way, shape or form. The most recent episode of On The Media explored this… and also talked about how most of King’s speeches were actually built off the works of others, but then (obviously) turned into something much more powerful through his detailed study and understanding of how to preach. It’s a fascinating story… made ridiculously annoying by his heirs’ desire to lock up and charge for King’s legacy.

Filed Under: copyright, legacy, locked up, martin luther king jr.

MLK Children Abusing IP Law (Again) To Try To Squeeze Money Out Of Anyone Who Honors Him

from the so-sad dept

We’ve discussed, in the past, the rather sad propensity of Martin Luther King Jr.’s estate to aggressively abuse copyright law to stop people from honoring the slain civil rights leader. The latest is that Stephen Spielberg has signed up to do a biopic of MLK Jr. Now, to film a biography, you don’t need any rights from the person or their heirs — but sometimes moviemakers still buy the unnecessary “rights” in order to have a closer working relationship with folks who have more knowledge or info about the person or events that are being filmed. That appears to be what happened here, where Dreamworks licensed the rights to make the movie — including “licensing” some of King’s famous speeches. However, some of Kings children are apparently threatening to sue over this, claiming they had no input in the deal and this is a violation of their intellectual property rights.

Of course, this also highlights a fun point for those who pitch the idea that copyright should last forever and descend to the heirs of the content creator. As the ownership gets spread out among younger generations, getting them to agree on anything will be quite unlikely. In any case, it’s a sad “legacy” the MLK estate is leaving here, concerning the overly aggressive “protection” of copyrights against those who clearly wish to honor the man’s own legacy.

Filed Under: biography, copyright, martin luther king jr., stephen spielberg

Can Plagiarism Add Value?

from the perhaps-not... dept

A bunch of folks have sent in the story in Cracked, entitled 5 Great Men Who Built Their Careers on Plagiarism, showing how Stephen Ambrose, T.S. Eliot, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard Owen and H.G. Wells all appear to have plagiarized certain major works. As we’ve discussed in the past, while straight-up plagiarism can hurt someone’s reputation in pretty serious ways, we have a bit more trouble condemning “plagiarism” where someone took something and turned it into something different. Jonathan Bailey, a staunch fighter against any type of plagiarism and copyright infringement, has written about the Cracked article, where he notes that the five men listed in the article would have a lot more trouble getting away with the same sort of plagiarism today, suggesting that’s a good thing. I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. In at least some of the cases of plagiarism listed in the original article, these guys took something someone else had done, but made it more impressive and did a better job getting the world to experience something wonderful. Would the world be better off without some of the works by these five men, even if they didn’t necessarily originate from them? I’m not so sure… That’s not to say that appropriating the works of others and pretending it’s your own is okay. The reputation hit you’re likely to take for doing that is pretty severe and not worth it. But I have a hard time believing that the actual final effect on the rest of the world is that bad.

Filed Under: creativity, h.g. wells, martin luther king jr., plagiarism, richard owen, stephen ambrose, t.s. eliot

MLK Jr. Estate Threatening To Sue Vendors For Selling Products With Obama And King

from the get-over-it dept

The family of Martin Luther King Jr. has unfortunately done plenty to tarnish the great man’s legacy over the last few decades, specifically in being overly aggressive claiming “ownership” of anything having to do with King, and demanding money from various entities that show King’s speeches. A decade ago they were involved in a big legal fight with CBS for showing King’s I Have A Dream speech. Who knew that dream was locked up thanks to intellectual property laws?

Now the family is apparently threatening to sue anyone selling any kind of merchandise that includes images of King and President-Elect Obama, claiming that if others are making money off of King’s image, King’s family should get a cut: “We do feel that if somebody’s out there making a dollar, we should make a dime.” So, now, apparently that dream is to keep making money off a speech that was delivered decades ago.

Filed Under: intellectual property, likeness, martin luther king jr., privacy rights, publicity rights, speeches