September 19, 2017

"We Shall Overcome" no longer copyrighted

Guardian -The first verse of the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome is no longer under copyright, a New York federal judge ruled on Friday.

Described as the “most powerful song of the 20th century” by the Library of Congress, the suit against the existing copyright holders was brought last year by the same legal team who had successfully disputed longstanding ownership claims over Happy Birthday to You. 'No Fascist USA!': how hardcore punk fuels the Antifa movement

Lawyers leading the class action against the Richmond Organization and Ludlow Music, claimed We Shall Overcome was an adaptation of an African American spiritual and therefore in the public domain and had only later been adopted by folk singer Pete Seeger, copyrighted, and established as an anthem of the 1940s labor protest movement

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I somehow doubt that Pete tried to copyright anything more than his arrangement of the song...if he even did that much.