http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/1/16/copyright-king-why-the-i-have-a-dream-speech-still-isn-t-free
Any unauthorized usage of the speech and a number of other speeches by King including in PBS documentaries is a violation of American law. Youd be hard pressed to find a good complete video version on the web, and its not even to be found in the new digital archive of the King Centers website. If you want to watch the whole thing, legally, youll need to get the $20 DVD.
Thats because the King estate, and, as of 2009, the British music publishing conglomerate EMI Publishing, owns the copyright of the speech and its recorded performance. While the copyright restriction isnt news, EMIs unusual role in policing the use of Kings words the first instance of the company taking on a non-music based intellectual property catalog hasnt been widely reported. In November 2011, EMI Group was auctioned off, and the publishing business was sold to a consortium run by Sony Corp for $2.2 billion. . . .
The awkward tussle over MLKs words bears recounting, especially given the ongoing controversy over the Stop Online Privacy Act, which targets copyright infringements on the Internet and highlights all sorts of problems with our aging copyright system and general ignorance about how ideas actually spread in the digital age. It also highlights the risks of a forceful anti-piracy law. Under a previous version of the SOPA bill, educational websites that host unlicensed versions of copyrighted political and cultural documents could be as easily blocked as a website hosting pirated films. . . .
King himself donated proceeds from licensing the speech to fund the civil rights movement, and the King family has made similar pledges. But while legal scholars might defend the familys legal right to Kings legacy and few would argue with the familys right to earn proceeds from that legacy others focus on the larger, obvious point: whether or not King would have wanted his ideas used in advertising, he certainly wouldnt have wanted them to be kept out of documentaries about the history of the civil rights movement, for instance.