MLK's "I Have A Dream" (Copyright 1963)

Full 17-minute video of MLK's "I Have A Dream"

• Read the full text online or download the PDF.

On Monday, I saw Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech in its entirety for the first time in my life. How can something so constitutional to our nationhood remain so obscure? Why didn't my school teachers play this for us every year? Because we the students don't own our history. The ideas behind MLK's dream might be our cultural patrimony, but the 17 minutes of his speech are owned and copywrit, which means they're not yours.

What's it mean to copyright a dream? If not the abstract idea, what about its specific articulation -- your (exclusive) version of the sueño? The 4fathers certainly did their darnedest trying to trademark The American Dream, even though it's basically just The Human Dream, re-branded as "life, liberty and the pursuit of property happiness." (ⓒ 1776 USA)




After CNN replayed the speech (which they presumably paid for), there was an interview with MLK's friend and lawyer Clarence Jones (above). In 1963, Jones had helped Dr. King write his "I Have A Dream Speech" -- I'll save my "it-takes-a-village" rant for mañana -- but what I found most interesting was his contribution of a single circled letter scribbled on the physical copies of the speech distributed to the press.


Ever since 1802, until quite recently, US law required that all physical copies of a published work must include an explicit notice of copyright, typically the symbol ⓒ. In March 1989, the Berne Convention ended this requirement in the US, which means that copyright protection is no longer subject to any (stupid) formality. Nowadays, as soon as you transform ( sublimate or reify?) an idea into physical reality, as soon as it's "fixed in a tangible medium of expression [and] its embodiment ... is sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration," then the expression of that idea automatically becomes legally yours. Though this change became effective in 1989, all works published before that date are still governed by the prior law, including MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech.

As he explains it in the video above (which btw I recorded with a FlipVid from a saved TiVo session, imported+edited with iMovie and then upload to YouTube, where it was again re-encoded), Clarence Jones [lawyer] re-opened the mimeograph copies of the speech, which were going to be distributed to the press, and scribbled circled c's on every copy. This proved important when, soon thereafter, 20th Century Fox Records released an unauthorized commercial recording of the speech on vinyl. The utter silliness of physically writing little ⓒs, like some magic word, ended up protecting MLK's copyright in court.

But back then, copyright law also required registration with the government, not just the ⓒ. In MLK's day, the rules were still based on the 1909 Copyright Act, which stipulated that publishing a new work without first registering it with the government meant the complete forfeiture of copyright protection.

The single, decisive act of publishing no longer occupies the prominent place it once did in determining copyright. From 1909 until 1976, the law guaranteed automatic copyright protection for works-in-progress, but upon publication, a work was required to be registered with proper notice or else it was just thrown into the public domain.

During MLK's court case with 20th Century Fox Records (and also in a later, similar case with CBS), the question of whether or not his speech was "published" became the important legal distinction. Delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, Martin Luther King's speech was heard by more than 200,000 people gathered in Washington DC, and countless more on TV and radio. A few days later, The New York Post published the complete text of the speech and later offered reprints for sale. Most importantly, MLK's own organization distributed physical copies to the press, and even though they were marked with the magic ⓒ, they didn't actually register the text with the government until a month after the speech.

The (possibly) legally legitamate argument for CBS + 20th Century Fox Records was that Dr. King lost his right to copyright protection because he "published" the speech before obtaining copyright, thereby placing the text in the public domain.

Though the 1909 Act wasn't untirely re-written until the 1976 Act (which de-emphasized the impact of the moment of publication wrt copyright protection), there were in the interim certain legal decision that gave the law certain shades of gray which MLK used to defend his copyright. First of all, his argument was based on the well-established precedent that a performance, no matter how broad the audience, is not a publication. In defending MLK's position, the court of appeals expressed concern that "an author whose message happens to be newsworthy" should not be forced "to choose between obtaining news coverage for his work and preserving his common-law copyright."

The second significant fact is that the physical copies of the speech were distributed only to the press. This means they were not released directly to the public, but instead to a specific group for a specific purpose. This distinction between a limited, as opposed to a general, publication eventually convinced the court to grant MLK exclusive legal ownership of his dream.

Of course, these days it's not actually Dr. King wielding legal control of his words, but his heirs. Clayborne Carson, director of the MLK Research & Education Institute has said he "would like to make [the "I Have A Dream" speech] as widely available as possible. However, I respect the King family's point of view that this is private property and there has to be a balancing of the public need versus the family need." President John F. Kennedy's inaugural address is in the public domain, and it's not because he forgot to register with the Feds, but it's well-worth remembering that the King family certainly doesn't enjoy the financial privilege of the Kennedy clan.

Critics of the King family's decision not to put the speech in the public domain say the poorest children are the most deprived: "The more elite the institution, the easier it is to pay the mandatory fee," explains David J. Garrow, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning MLK biography.

(The Internet, of course, has made this somewhat of a moot point, since illegal pirates have upload an unauthorized version of the entire speech onto YouTube and the full text is available both online or as a PDF download.)

In his 1971 academic article "Protection of Original Material," the former President of Berkelee College of Music, Lee Eliot Berk, connects the lessons from MLK's "I Have A Dream" copyright issues and the problems faced by musical educators with regard to their original works used for teaching and research purposes. Of course, I haven't actually read anything past the first page, because I don't pay tuition = I'm no longer an official academic = I don't have access privilege to JSTOR. I recognize (abstractly) that JSTOR offers a service and deserves remuneration for their efforts, not to mention the original author's work, but IMHO the market of ideas just shouldn't be governed by supply n' demand. That it would cost me $19.00 USD to read this article is just rediculous.

In the (beginning of the) article, Berk raises questions concerning "how the teacher's sole rights to the material he creates are to be preserve for his exclusive benefit." He advises teachers to "consider the legal significance of showing the material to a colleague, delivering it verbally in class lecture format, having it performed, recording it, or distributing copies of it". It should be noted that this was written before the law was revised by the Copyright Act of 1978, which means these were more practical concerns than they are today, but I think they demonstrate how copyright concerns can stifle collaboration in an attempt to protect the exclusivity of authorship.

Harvard University recently adopted a policy that requires faculty members to make their scholarly articles available free online and MIT has free online course materials for the autodidact. Many academics, such as ethnomusicologist Wayne Marshall, have posted their work on their personal blogs, where he takes it a step further and licenses his works copyleft so that others can share + remix.

But in general, academic journals are still just ivory echo chambers. I take much less umbrage with Disney fighting for an exclusive perpetual trademark of Mickey Mouse because they're in the business of making money. As an organization, that is their primary purpose and they're doing what they can to fulfil 'that role.

But the role of the education system and Civil Rights movement is different: the goal is affecting positive social change. Money is needed for operating costs, but profit should be a concern only insofar as it nurtures that goal.

it was all a dream, i used to read ethno-remix magazine

Part II mañana will explore borrowing/stealing/copying in the rhetoric and writing of Barack Obama, Jay-Z and Dr. Martin Luther King.

Who's dream was it? And where'd the dream come from?