You’d expect a speech as famous and powerful as MLK Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ to be a part of the public domain already. Nope. Instead, the rights of the speech are held by MLK’s family.
Usually, whenever a speech is broadcast to a large audience, it’d be up on YouTube within seconds. What isn’t on YouTube these days? Free country! Free speech! Or something like that.
But in 1999, a court ruled 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.” And because “performances” were not part of the public domain, MLK and his family had the rights to claim copyright. That’s why it’s hard to find full audio or video of the magnificent speech on YouTube. Or any other video sharing service for that matter. Of course, people can still use excerpts of the speech under “fair use” but nobody really knows the limits of that fair use until they get a letter in the mail asking for a licensing fee. (USA Today was ordered to pay a $US1700 licensing fee).
MLK’s family control the rights to “I Have a Dream” until 2038. You can read the entire “copyright nightmare” of ‘I Have a Dream’ at Motherboard. [Motherboard.tv]