As Washington gears up to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech later this month, one thing might be missing from the celebrations: the speech itself.
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A full, unedited video clip of the speech is tougher to find than you might think, because of copyright disputes that date back almost as far as the speech itself.
“We were shocked to find that it was very difficult to find a full copy of Dr. King’s speech on YouTube,” said Evan Greer, a campaign manager at Fight for the Future, an Internet free-speech advocacy group. In January, the group posted the full-length speech on Vimeo in an act of “civil disobedience” coinciding with Martin Luther King Day. The video was promptly removed for violating Vimeo’s terms of service, Greer said, but aversion on YouTube has managed to avoid detection and remains up on the site, having accumulated more than 80,000 views.