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| Pete Seeger is one of several people who copyrighted "We Shall Overcome." Photo: Shutterstock |
The plaintiffs, a nonprofit called the We Shall Overcome Foundation, and producers from the 2013 film Lee Daniels’ The Butler, have argued that the song does not contain enough substantial changes to qualify it for copyright. The song, registered for copyright in 1960 and 1963 by Pete Seeger, Zilphia Horton, Frank Hamilton, and Guy Carawn, was based on a black spiritual dating back to at least the 19th century. Among the few changes made by the modern singers was replacing “will” with “shall” in the eponymous lyric.
The Richmond Organization, which publishes the song, attempted to prevent the suit from coming to trial, but Judge Denise L. Cote of the District Court in Manhattan, dismissed their claims. She has held that further discovery will be needed to address the issues of “originality and ownership.” The case could be decided in trial or through a summary judgment.
The plaintiffs are represented by Mark C. Rifkin, who recently won a case that put “Happy Birthday to You” into the public domain, which is where many have long argued that it should be. He is also involved in a trial over “This Land is Your Land,” another well-known folk song.
Copyright law is intended to protect the rights of private individuals to own and profit from songs, books, and other creative media, but it comes into conflict with fair use and the idea of the public domain, a figurative space in which certain things belong to everyone, allowing anyone to use them. Copyright law has gotten harder and harder to make sense of in recent decades, driven in large part by the Walt Disney Company’s mission to make sure that characters like Mickey Mouse, whose copyrights would be long expired, do not enter the public domain.
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