March 16, 2005

Feel Good Story Of The Week: Lars Ulrich, Scourge of Music Pirates, Born Again As Fair Use Good Guy

For the last month, Boing Boing has been following the story of Beatallica, a Milwaukee parody band who had been posting their Metallica-esque covers of Beatles songs on the web. Back in late February, when Sony got wind of their activities, they cried copyright violation and promptly sent a cease and desist letter to the Beatallica site webmaster, who responded by regretfully taking the site down.

At this point, something very unexpected happened. Metallica’s drummer, Lars Ulrich, stepped in… The last time Lars was involved in a public scrap over copyright was back in 2000 when he was crying foul at the “theft” of Metallica’s music by Napster users. This time, however, he was offering his support to the “violators”, and sent the band’s attorney in to bat for them.

As a result, the news has come through that Sony has decided to drop their action. So, the Beatallica site should be back up this week. In the meantime, you can download Beatallica’s raucous oeuvre from Metafilter Music.

Posted by Warren at March 16, 2005 09:12 PM | Copyright