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

Universal Music Album Recalled... For Infringing Content?

from the seize-'em! dept

Probably the most aggressive major record label, when it comes to supporting ridiculously overaggressive attacks on infringement and things like taking down websites, would be Universal Music -- the company whose ex-CEO once gleefully declared to the world that he was too clueless to hire someone who understands technology (he has since moved on to lead Sony Music). Of course, we always discover that the most aggressive copyright maximalists are later caught infringing themselves... So it's not surprising to hear that the release of the album for Universal Music recording artist Tyga has run into some copyright problems. While the album had been sent to retailers and was available for pre-order on iTunes, it was yanked off iTunes, and a note was sent to retailers telling them to "pull and return" the album.

The issue? Apparently the title track, "Careless World," has some sound clips from a Martin Luther King speech... and no one bothered to clear it. Oops. Of course, many of us think that locking up MLK's works are a travesty, but his heirs have been incredibly aggressive over the years in claiming that they deserve to get paid for any attempts to honor MLK. Of course, if Universal Music wasn't such an extreme copyright maximalist we might have a bit of sympathy for their plight. But given that they've made this bed, there's a bit of irony in noting that they now have to lie in it.

Filed Under: clearance, copyright, infringement, martin luther king, mlk, tyga
Companies: universal music