"I Have a Dream" speech and copyright, fair use

Some of you will remember our discussions of copyright and using movies, music etc. in multimedia projects. (You can search "copyright" in our blog and see past posts.) Yesterday's 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech has got some coverage regarding the fact that the speech is copyrighted and mostly cannot be used in entirety without paying licensing fees. One copyright lawyer wrote a column in the Washington Post exploring the issues. He discusses "fair use" and copyright cases and how they might relate to the speech.