A Copyright Nightmare 411
New submitter forkfail writes "If further proof were needed that copyright law was out of control in the U.S., it can be found in the fact that it costs 10 dollars to view Martin Luther King's famous Dream Speech. You might think you could find it on YouTube or other public venues, given its importance in American history. But no — the rights are firmly locked away until 2038."
Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear IP Overloads. I'm worried. I want to get copies of the Gettysburg Address and , but if I read these words without paying the appropriate sums to the Lincoln and Shakespeare families, will I be sued, and what will be the fines for infringement? My understanding is that it is now the number of atoms in the universe squared dollars, but perhaps that has changed.
Yours sincerely, your frightened subservient intellectual serf.
Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
What better way to encourage him to create new works?
Dup (Score:5, Insightful)
This story is a duplicate, but still valuable. [slashdot.org]
And as I posted previously, I still want to know why this is different from Steam Boat Willy. Cultures need to be able to decide for themselves what is significant. In order to do that, copyright needs to have a limit. I would suggest no more than 2 generations, or 38 years. Disney and other companies have destroyed what should be a person's innate right to culture. Almost all of us alive today were raised with Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse should belong to us all. And so should MLK's Dream.
The point of copyright is to expand public domain (Score:5, Insightful)
The entire point of copyright is to encourage works to be contributed to the public domain. Kinda nullifies public domain when the duration of copyright is almost half as long as America has existed. Let's turn back the clock on copyright duration. Make it 5-7 years. If that was long enough to exploit one's works in the 1600s, it would certainly be adequate today with the speed of digital distribution.
Nein. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just part of a larger, really nasty conflict which has been going on within the King family since Coretta King's death.
Who cares? That ought to be irrelevant. Copyright should not extend as long (or longer than) 70 years in the first place.
Re:The point of copyright is to expand public doma (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that by doing that, some very rich people would have to find a new dive.
You see, these very rich people are also very lazy people. They are people who sit behind a desk doing absolutly nothing, but get paid in excess of 300$/hr to pretend they are george jetson.
Specifically, I am talking about media executives, and their deadweight, spoiled and pretentious offspring.
If copyright only lasted 5 years, these people would have a much more difficult time milking the talent of other people for their own personal profit. As such, and because they are so innately lazy and hate doing things themselves, they spend some of their money to sent professional doubletalkers (eg, lobbyists) to congress with suitcases full of money.
These lazy bastards like the current status quo, drool over getting paid even more for doing even less, find the idea of a healthy public domain "terrifying", and will stop at nothing until their empires of graft and sloth are unassailable.
If you want sensible copyright to return, you have to neuter these wealthy bastard's ability to influence law.
Start there. Otherwise you are simply spinning your wheels.
Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:5, Insightful)
Well obviously decency and a willingness to risk your own life to make the world a better place can skip a few generations.
Re:Mod parent... (Score:5, Insightful)
Broken window fallacy.
The copyright on that video has not generated any wealth. It has shifted wealth from some people to some other people. To boot, Dr Rev MLK Jr would have made the speech without pecuniary incentive... thus even the spirit of the intention of copyright has no bearing.
The short and simple of it is that there is a cash grab by MLK's heirs based in copyright law.
The long and complex of it is that there is a cash grab by MLK's heirs based in copyright law.
More bizarre than I imagined (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
So all those people he's speaking to in the video are members of the media? I'm not defending copyright law, but this seems to be a case where copyright law in itself is not the problem, it's the way it's being enforced.
It's not the Martin Luther King estate's fault, necessarily.
But it is. They could put his speech in the public domain. They could choose not to sue for infringements. They could sell the speech and video of it for free. This isn't a judgment of whether they should, but copyright law hasn't mandated this scenario, it's just allowed it.
Also crucial in the estate’s copyright claims: though King himself claimed copyright of the speech a whole month after he delivered it, his claim was seen as valid because no “tangible” copy of the speech had been distributed before he made his claim.
Well, everything seems to be in order. I agree copyright needs to be seriously reformed, but the reporting of this example seems to be much inflated to sound more nefarious than it is.
Political speech (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not see exactly why political speech can or should be protected by copyright. I see only a legacy of issues with politicians sending DMCA on people using excerpts of their speech they do not want to be seen anymore (because they said something stupid or racist, or whatever). Political speech is very public by nature, and must not be protected by copyright for the sake of democracy.
Re:How is it different from a play? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:4, Insightful)
Cocaine !
Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:5, Insightful)
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
So that dream came true, just not the way he expected.
Re:How is it different from a play? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I know, there's no "logic", they're simply defined by law.
Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:5, Insightful)
lose copyright because performed? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that Dr. King's speech is, in its essential nature, an instance of a "speech to the public".
Its content was loudly and emphatically proclaimed directly to the ears of a large live audience and also I assume was broadcast far and wide by radio and television at the time, and the speechwriter and deliverer Dr. King, if asked at the time, would certainly have said "Yes. Yes. Spread it far and wide. It is a message that I need to get to as many ears as possible far and wide, as soon as possible, and the message should be ringing in those ears forever."
That was CLEARLY the original intent.
I think it is safe to say therefore that the content of that speech resides in the public domain. If it does not, then nothing does.
Surely, if the "form" of some particular video recording of it is copyrighted, it is only the form of that recording as distinct from other forms, and it is not the content itself, which is in its essential nature a public domain utterance to a nation.
So at the very least someone should be able to re-enact it (from notes and memories, it could be claimed) and record that and make that available.
but if there is a secondary recording not owned by some greedy private interest, that would be better and is not subject to the same copyright as the recording that seems to be at the heart of the legal case. That would be better.
Or perhaps it was broadcast into another country and recorded there. The possibilities for freedom are endless. Or one can always dream.