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If he intended the speech to be in the public domain, he would have put it in the public domain... either during his life, or via his will. That fact that he di
by monochromatic 15y ago
If he intended the speech to be in the public domain, he would have put it in the public domain... either during his life, or via his will. That fact that he didn't says more about his intentions than any of our after-the-fact speculation.
- chc 15y agoI'm not sure it's exactly a ringing endorsement of the Copyright Act of 1976 that Martin Luther King Jr. didn't take the time out of his civil rights campaign to work out the copyright status of everything he ever said in the less than half a decade between the time he gave this speech and his untimely death.
- monochromatic 15y agoFrom the article: "King himself donated proceeds from licensing the speech to fund the civil rights movement" This sure makes it sound like he wasn't ignorant of copyright law and its impact on his speeches.
- chc 15y agoThis sure makes it sound to me like he was more concerned with the civil rights movement of the 1960s than with the copyright status of his speech in 2025. EDIT: Come on, downvoters — do you really mean to suggest that King would have wanted a civil rights memorial to have to pay out his family before it could celebrate his cause?