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Comment by linkydinkandyou | Hacker News Reader

Except Dr. King didn't write the speech. From Wikipedia:

"The speech was drafted with the assistance of Stanley Levison and Clarence Benjamin Jones[17] in Riverdale, New York City. Jones has said that "the logistical preparations for the march were so burdensome that the speech was not a priority for us" and that, "on the evening of Tuesday, Aug. 27, [12 hours before the March] Martin still didn't know what he was going to say"."

I'm not so sure these people would appreciate the fact that you think they should work without being compensated for it, or that somehow, compensation and/or ownership isn't a good reason to do something.

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I suspect the primary compensation they hoped to get for that particular speech was _not_ financial.

People who write songs and materials for Churches do it to make a living. It's actually a big problem for folks who write songs and arrangements for Church Choirs--many of their customers don't feel they should be paid! I've been to conferences at Music and Musician trade shows where this very issue is discussed.

Right, and work for hire means a writer gets paid one time to do the job, and the residuals are owned by whomever hired the person do write the speech / book / song / lyrics / tambourine solo.

Doesn't matter if it's churches or playing in jazz clubs, writing and making music for a living is a tough business. I've worked some churches that paid quite well - at least industry standard - and I could go online now on CraigsList and find 5+ requests per day asking for music volunteers because religion. In my experience, churches are simply another ill-informed group that frequently want all the benefits of live music without compensating for it. Same goes for well-meaning volunteer organizations.

> many of their customers don't feel they should be paid

This happens to physical products too, I don't see how specific individuals not wanting to pay for something has any bearing on the existence / effectiveness of copyright.

Well, firstly speech-writers normally are compensated...they're paid for their work when they do it.

Secondly, they're not the beneficiaries of the copyright: it belongs to the King estate.

The argument for Copyright is that is incentivizes people to create things (e.g. musicians to write songs).

Are you stating that without copyright no one would write speeches? Would people have just abandoned the Civil Rights movement because of a lack of copyright? That seems like an extreme view.

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