‘We Shall Overcome’ Is Put in Public Domain in a Copyright Settlement | Hacker News Reader

‘We Shall Overcome’ Is Put in Public Domain in a Copyright Settlement

nytimes.com

132 pointstchalla35 comments

> In a statement, Ludlow said royalties from the song since the early 1960s had been donated to the nonprofit Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee, which created the We Shall Overcome Fund to distribute all of the royalties through grants and scholarships in black communities. It was not immediately clear how much money the fund had distributed. “Without the same scope of copyright protection, Highlander’s grants and scholarships will be deeply affected in the future,” the statement said.

Without transparency, I am leaning towards assuming there is a hefty dose of Hollywood Accounting (or whatever the name for the the music industry's equivalent is) going on[0].

> Ludlow also said uses of the song had in the past been “carefully vetted” but warned that its words and melody could now be used by advertising agencies and others “in any manner they wish, including inaccurate historical uses, commercials, parodies, spoofs and jokes, and even for political purposes by those who oppose civil rights for all Americans.”

Oh I am sure that a for-profit company "vetting" potential clients is much more reliable than the inevitability of a huge social backlash against anyone foolish enough to use this song for selfish purposes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

CharityNavigator entry for Highlander Center: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

I went in hoping for blood, but that’s actually pretty good. Unless they’re fudging their financials in a truly criminal way, and there’s no reason to believe that, it’s a tight ship with low administrative overhead. They’re spending a bit over 70% on their programs, and not too much on admin or fundraising.

Glad to see that the charity donated to is OK, but that is still after the royalties are donated. Hollywood accounting is not yet ruled out.

It's legit. There's a good documentary about it on FilmStruck at the moment. MLK and Rosa Parks were alums.

They seem to do reasonably well on the Transparency subsection.

Parodies, spoofs, and jokes are often fair use. It's bizarre that a copyright owner would say that.

> It's bizarre that a copyright owner would say that.

I dunno, intellectual dishonesty from any party when it comes to this topic doesn't strike me as "bizarre" as much as "super common".

Eh, I'm sure this is going to end up in a Coca-Cola commercial eventually.

"We shall overcome our hunger for a taco dripping with cheese!"

An interview with Pete Seeger about the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-FmQEFFFko

'We Shall Overcome' was unfortunately forever destroyed for me by a Swedish politician (Birgit Friggebo) who suggested it once in a meeting with a lot of agitated people[1] in order to "lower the mood" (sic). As stated in the Wikipedia article[2] this is probably one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZqPMROclcM

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Shall_Overcome#Widespread_a...

> As stated in the Wikipedia article[2] this is probably one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics.

I checked the linked Wikipedia entry and it didn’t give any context for why this was such an embarrassment. I also searched Google for more info, but the English-only search results didn’t turn up anything useful. I gave up after the first five or so had nothing to add.

I’m curious if you can give a more detailed explanation of why this was such a gaffe. The limited info on this incident isn’t helping me paint a picture of the situation. As it stands, it seems to be a rather harmless request. I’m missing something significant, I think, about the delivery or tone.

Edit: I should clarify that I’m reading this at a time when I am not in a position to follow the YouTube link.

As the attempted serial killer "Lasermannen" shot several immigrants around Stockholm in 1992, Prime Minister Carl Bildt and Immigration Minister Birgit Friggebo attended a meeting in Rinkeby. As the audience became upset, Friggebo tried to calm them down by proposing that everyone sing "We Shall Overcome." This statement is widely regarded as one of the most embarrassing moments in Swedish politics.

Seems pretty obvious to me. Responding to a real political problem with an empty gesture of solidarity is everything people don't like about politicians.

I'm not sure how you're interpreting that as the response to the political problem instead of "trying to calm down an agitated audience so that the response to the problem can actually be discussed". Peaceful, democratic govt doesn't work without dialogue, and this seems like a ham-handed attempt at getting back towards dialogue instead of yelling.

Precisely, it's ham-fisted. Dialogue means shutting up and listening as well as talking. Maybe she should have let the crowd vent their legitimate grievances for a while. Telling people to calm down when they have good reason to be angry is infantilizing them and demonstrates a disinterest in the depth of their feeling on the topic. It basically says 'I'm you're elected official but I don't actually feel like listening to you.'

It isn't obvious to me. Others have sung 'We Shall Overcome' as a gesture of solidarity after hate crimes or killings. For examples:

"'We Shall Overcome': Mourners Honor Orlando Victims At The White House" from http://dcist.com/2016/06/emotional_scene_outside_white_house...

"'If that young man thought he was going to divide this country he failed miserably': Thousands unite and sing We Shall Overcome at Charleston prayer vigil" from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132292/Thousands-ga...

"NAACP leaders joined local clergy and others to call for police reform in Chicago. After speaking with media, protesters linked arms and knelt in the street while singing "We Shall Overcome," blocking traffic." from http://abc7chicago.com/news/jason-van-dyke-posts-bond-leaves... .

"Citizens were joined by religious leaders, city leaders and a Huntington police officer and walked through the streets singing, "we shall overcome," and chanting, "stop the drugs, stop the violence."" from http://www.wsaz.com/content/news/Prayer-for-peace-vigil-held... .

There are also examples of "We Shall Overcome" being sung by politicians for something other than murder:

"House Democrats sing 'We Shall Overcome' shame GOP during sit-in" from http://www.kens5.com/news/politics/national-politics/house-d...

Is the embarrassing part in the Swedish case the it was a politician who tried to organize the singing? Or was it the implication that immigrants in Sweden are treated like black people in America? Or the expectation that immigrants would both identify with the American civil rights experience and know the song? Or something else?

If a politician in Sweden were to lead people to sing The Internationale, would that also be seen as an "empty gesture of solidarity"? (My assumption is that socialist-leaning Sweden has politicians who sing the national anthem. https://www.thelocal.se/20090406/18692 says 'the [SDU] party also offered up renditions of socialist and communist songs such as "the Internationale" and "Song for Stalin"' so it's not like it's an uncommon song there like it is in the US.)

Notice how all those are Americans, for which "We shall overcome" means something historically, and nevertheless a lot of those are cringeworthy bogus political gestures (e.g. "House Democrats sing 'We Shall Overcome' shame GOP during sit-in") as well considering the legacy of the song.

Now put that in a totally unrelated situation, in a foreign country, and used not as a grass-roots song sung for solidarity, but as a top-down suggestion...

It's the difference between leading people who are asking for leadership and treating them like unruly children when they are trying to articulate issues in their own voice. In this case the crowd was expressing its dissatisfaction with the failure of the political authorities to keep their communities safe; they were critiquing leadership rather than asking to be inspired.

Context matters. The song itself isn't the issue; singing 'We shall overcome' might have been fine after a free and frank exchange of views in which the crowd had had a chance to articulate their grievances, and the politicians had had a chance to explain what they proposed to do about them, and common ground had been established.

I agree that context matters. I felt that your original description was too context-free to agree that your conclusion was "pretty obvious". Instead, it seemed more like a blanket dislike of politicians.

The embarrassing part is that the suggestion fell so flat but that she non the less went through with singing it. She should have read the mood of the crowd better - now it ended up as a blueprint for nightmares of people afraid of speaking to crowds.

> The embarrassing part is that the suggestion fell so flat but that she non the less went through with singing it.

Thank you. This is what was missing from Wikipedia and other comments.

It's very much different from the times the song has been sung in the US by the civil rights movements. I understand it may be difficult without enough context. I'll try to add some.

Rinkeby is a district in Stockholm known for a high concentration of immigrants [1]. In the early nineties a murderer (called Lasermannen [2] due to using a laser sight on his gun) targeting random immigrants was at large in the area. People who lived there were understandably afraid and wanted to know what was being done to stop the shootings.

The prime minister at the time (Carl Bildt) and the immigration minister (Birgit Friggebo) goes to Rinkeby to try to calm the upset people and answer their questions. You need to understand that when they come they have bodyguards and the whole shebang. Normally they work in a nice building in the city center (regeringskansliet), live in a big house in a nice neighborhood or an apartment in the city center or something like that. They have nothing in common with the scared people in Rinkeby. It's not a social movement meeting. It's not a protest meeting. It's a someone-is-killing-us-HELP!! kind of meeting. The people in Rinkeby did not come to sing a song, or to protest or overcome injustice. They came because they were afraid that they would be the next victim and wanted the shooter caught!

It's in this context where Birgit Friggebo somehow gets her improvised "stroke of genius" and (quite forcibly) suggests that everyone sings "We Shall Overcome" as if she's a civil rights leader. She has no business suggesting such a thing! If you get the opportunity to watch the clip, check out the prime minister's reaction. He basically blurts out: "Hell No!"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinkeby [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ausonius

Ahh, I had forgotten about that, that was so unexpected to be almost surreal.

Also the statement by Ines Uusmann (swedish minister of communications at the time) that 'internet is just a fad' is another 'classic' in swedish politics.

That was a headline written by the journalist, and not a statement she actually made. The interview is linked from her wikipedia article, and concerns that she thinks people will "spend less time" to "mindlessly surf" the Internet, i.e. that it will be overtaken by large businesses. You could probably argue that either way, but it's interesting to see that even contemporary history is written like the saying goes.

>That was a headline written by the journalist, and not a statement she actually made.

Well, she said the heading wasn't an exact quote, but also not a misrepresentation. From an interview in 2016 she admits that while the headline was 'click-baity' it was not unreasonable given what she had said in the interview, also stating:

'My colleagues were upset over it being a misquote, but that was not really the case.'

Now I'm curious about church hymns and then again about how UUs can "get away with" changing the words to "others' hymns" and republish as new.

You can create a new work subject to copyright incorporating other works. Any movie with music is an example, and so is “sampling” in music, or translations of books.

At issue here is wether the changes to the song were significant enough for it to be considered a creative work.

This is no different than the test for a de novo work:

    Echo „hello world“

Is not enough to trigger copyright protection. Yet the MacOS source code is. Somewhere between the two, there is a line of demarcation. Where exactly that line is was the subject of this lawsuit.

Most of those traditional church hymns are really old; many not subject to copyright or, those that are, simply no one cares. If the UU had to fight for them, some could be protected under satire/parody.

Relevant discussion recently about copyright and church songs (disclaimer - I wrote the first rant, and people contributed in the replies):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16227520

Where is the settlement here? It was a court clarifying that some people didn't actually have the copyright they claimed.

The moral of the story is: if you're running into (truly) BS legal ramifications for your project, fight it.

Assuming, you can afford a law firm.

Not what I’d consider the moral of the story at all. I’d say the moral was: just because you can win, doesn’t mean you should.

Some movie gets to use a clip, a whole bunch of project for disadvantaged people don’t get funded. Hard to cheer a victory against BS copyright this time.

Non-paywalled link, anyone? (ironically)

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