A great example of copyright gone wrong. And, yes, the monies go to the King Foundation, presumably a worthy cause, but …
I would not, by the bye, call this censorship, which implies a legal suppression of material for moral or political reasons. Rather, it's simply theft from the public domain — which is the only thing I can call a speech (and news footage thereof) held on public property before a public audience as a public event.
"So does that mean that a performance of 'Les Miserables' on the Washington Mall should void its copyright?" you might ask. I'm tempted to say yes. I'd also be tempted to note that King's speech is fundamentally history, not a fictional tale, as a way of differentiating it. To consider it copyrighted from reproduction (vs. remix or reuse) seems, to me, a travesty, a copyrighting of an event, not a creative work.
(The speech as a whole can still be found here and there online, where it hasn't been spotted and a take-down issued, e.g., http://youtu.be/smEqnnklfYs .)
Under present US copyright law, the speech will be considered under copyright protection until 2038 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_have_a_dream#Copyright_dispute)
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MLK’s ‘I Have a Dream’ censored from Web on Internet Freedom Day
A video of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech uploaded in honor of Internet Freedom Day has been removed from Vimeo for a Terms of Service violation.
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Money. And I’m sure in 2038, someone will sue to extend the copyright.
I believe Disney will be pushing for it before then, Ellie. They seem to be on the vanguard of “stuff about to go into public domain that we want to still make money from”.
Why are you so desperate to deny a creator his income?