Ad riles Luther King estate

By Peter Calder

The estate of Martin Luther King may sue organisers of a campaign against tonight's Hero Parade for using the image of the slain civil rights crusader in a newspaper advertisement.

And the family of Dame Whina Cooper are also upset that her image was used without permission.

The advertisement in Wednesday's New Zealand Herald used photographs of Dame Whina, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Dr King over the words: "It takes more than a parade to make a hero." It sought support for a campaign against "the promotion of destructive sexuality."

Intellectual Property Management, based in Atlanta, Georgia, acting on behalf of the King family, has the exclusive right to the speeches, personal papers and image of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968.

Lawyers for IPM say they will decide next week what action to take. But a member of the staff said that infringements of the copyright were routinely acted on.
"We sue the infringers," she said. "That's the only way you retain the copyright."

Meanwhile, Joe Cooper, Dame Whina's son, said he was aggrieved that the people who placed the advertisement had not sought the family's permission to use his mother's picture. "What right have they got to do that? It shouldn't have been in there."

He said Dame Whina was "a very religious person and had her principles about [homosexuality] but she would never have ... opposed the practice. She had more important matters to attend to."

The advertisement was placed in the name of Stop Promoting Homosexuality International, whose spokesman, Julian Batchelor, said he had not been aware Dr King's image was copyrighted. Asked what basis he had for assuming Dr King would support his organisation's cause, he said: "Of course he would support the values we outlined in the advertisement."

He had used Dame Whina because "we talked to people who knew her and the values she stood for." But a few minutes later he changed his mind and said that neither he nor the advertisement implied any of the four people pictured supported the group's aims. They were pictured as examples of what a hero was, he said.