View Full Version : Metallica reaches a new low
Minkus_Swan
17 Jul 2003, 19:16
Lars fools us all by saying that Metallica owns the E and F chords, and is taking legal action against some unknown Canadian band Unfaith
"We're not saying we own those two chords, individually - that would be ridiculous. We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."
Click here for the full article Link (http://www1.scoopthis.com/411/met_uf/stc_met_uf_mtv.htm)
Well Meshuggah better call their lawyers - Met's new album is full of lawsuits! :rolleyes:
Fall Out Boy
17 Jul 2003, 19:35
Ulrich states that he's not trying to prevent Unfaith from using the two chords, only that he feels Metallica should be credited for them whenever used, and is calling for 50% of all revenue generated from any song using them.
Pathetic
Mooster7
17 Jul 2003, 19:45
You know what else you can do with E, F? You can start playing the theme music to Jaws. It's coming Lars. Coming to get ya.
I clicked on the link posted above, and the article linked to an official media release from Metallica about the alleged theft of two chords.
It went on about how Metallica owe it to their fans to fight the injustice... Lars you owe it to your fans to not put out a sh1t album after five years with no new material.
Has System Of A Down tried suing Metallica about copying their sound for the latest abomination? Has Judas Priest sued them for re-writing "Beyond The Realms Of Death" and calling it "Fade To Black"?
Metallica died when Dave Mustaine got kicked out.
PS - Listen to the clip on the Unfaith website www.unfaith.net and you will pee your pants at the allegation. Surely this can't be the sound that's been "stolen"!!!
go team
18 Jul 2003, 00:08
"Because if it's on the net, it's got to be true" :rolleyes:
CowboyFromHell
18 Jul 2003, 00:16
Originally posted by Darky
I clicked on the link posted above, and the article linked to an official media release from Metallica about the alleged theft of two chords.
It went on about how Metallica owe it to their fans to fight the injustice... Lars you owe it to your fans to not put out a sh1t album after five years with no new material.
Has System Of A Down tried suing Metallica about copying their sound for the latest abomination? Has Judas Priest sued them for re-writing "Beyond The Realms Of Death" and calling it "Fade To Black"?
Metallica died when Dave Mustaine got kicked out.
PS - Listen to the clip on the Unfaith website www.unfaith.net and you will pee your pants at the allegation. Surely this can't be the sound that's been "stolen"!!!
System of a Metallica hey Darky? ;)
Look carefully at the URL's of the story. It's clear that it isn't an MTV article at all.
Duh!
Like go team mentioned "If it's on the net, it's got to be true"
http://www.scoopthis.com/
Some of you fall for stuff like this to easy.
mouldy_bread
18 Jul 2003, 15:22
Well they did mention it on the radio, it could have some truth.
Originally posted by mouldy_bread
Well they did mention it on the radio, it could have some truth.
On what? The hot 30 count down?
They'd fall for a hoax like that, so that'd be understandable.
(I'm not putting it past metallica, or any other band to do something like this, but come on...)
mouldy_bread
18 Jul 2003, 15:41
Originally posted by M29
On what? The hot 30 count down?
What the hell is that?
I heard it on Triple M at work today.
go team
18 Jul 2003, 15:50
even triple m wouldn't be that stupid, would they?
mouldy_bread
18 Jul 2003, 15:51
I found this
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/07/17/ctv.metallica/index.html
(Court TV) -- Radio stations and Web sites were flooded yesterday with news that the seminal heavy metal band, Metallica, had launched yet another lawsuit to protect its music from theft. This time, the rock pioneers were purportedly suing a Canadian band called Unfaith for trademark infringement over the use of a "Metallica-branded" chords E and F.
The only problem: The story was a ruse.
"That's a hoax," Metallica's Los Angeles-based lawyer, Jill Pietrini, told Courttv.com.
Freelance commercial designer and aspiring musician Erik Ashley, 29, cleverly concocted the scam which sent users to an MTV.com story about the suit, which included a link to a fictional response from the band.
"We're not saying we own those two chords, individually," said drummer Lars Ulrich in Ashley's spoof.
"That would be ridiculous," the faux quote continued. "We're just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music."
Ashley even tossed in a barb from Metallica's lawyer, Pietrini, for added realism.
"They continue to shamelessly feature the two chords on their Web site song samples and we just can't have that," he wrote.
Exhausted after a day of fielding calls from dozens of newspapers and radio stations (including National Public Radio) as well as The Onion and Rolling Stone magazine, the Montreal, Canada resident told Courttv.com that he never expected the ruse to catch on.
"It has taken on a life of its own," said Ashley, who ran a spoof Web site, SpoofThis.com, from 1997 to 2000. "Our server crashed 3 times today ... The hits are already well over 100,000 visits."
The viral spread of Ashley's ruse sent tremors through message-board communities, where some members were shocked, some nonplussed, and some incredulous.
Judging by many of the posted messages, Metallica's yen for lawsuits helped the spoof take wing.
"I'm not sure what's worse, that the story is a fake, or that it was actually conceivable that Metallica would do that," said one boarder with the nickname TANSTAAFL.
That was part of Ashley's motivation.
"We all know about the Napster issue, the perfume company, the tire makers, Metallica has sued them all," he said. "The idea behind this parody was to gauge just how much their reputation has suffered as a result of the suits. Would people go so far as to believe that something this extraordinary, this outlandish, could conceivably be true?"
Apparently so. A spokesperson for the band's record label, Elektra, declined to comment.
While Ashley's ruse was clever, it was not impossible to detect.
Neither the MTV story nor the supposed Metallica response were hosted on the network's or band's own servers, but were distributed from Ashley's ScoopThis.com server.
And a quick review of songs available on Unfaith's official Web site (actually just Ashley's one-man band) would make even a casual listener skeptical of Ulrich's supposed claim of "confusion" and "deception."
Whereas Metallica sings about dark themes like death and suicide in songs like "Sanitarium," "Kill 'em All," and "Unforgiven," Unfaith's poppy Christian rock tunes feature decidedly un-Metallica lyrics like "I wanna be Jesus now/Let me be your Jesus now" over techno and guitar-flavored riffs.
A quick search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's online database turned up registrations for Metallica branded footballs, Metallica-branded sweatshirts and sunglasses -- but no "Metallica-branded chords."
And, as one legal expert told Courttv.com, Ashley's notion that the E-F chord progression constituted trademark infringement, rather than copyright infringement, may not have stood up in court, either.
Such a song structure issue "typically in the province of copyright law, which relates to any type of artistic expression fixed in a tangible medium," said Michael Friedman, an entertainment/intellectual property partner with the New York firm Jenkens & Gilchrist Parker Chapin.
Still, the scheme was clever enough to work, largely because Ashley carefully reproduced the design templates used by the MTV.com and Metallica Web sites. To the casual observer, the sites were indistinguishable from the real ones.
"Getting all of the links working was the hardest part," he said. "If you click on the option to post on the MTV.com message board about this story, the link would actually take you there to the real thing."
Ashley even quoted himself in the fake MTV.com story. "I thought it was a prank at first," he had himself say, playing David to Metallica's Goliath. "Now I'm not sure what to think."
One might think Ashley's publicity would spur his budding music career, but he calls it just a "hobby." Ashley says he's more worried about finding a full-time job, and that the spoof will probably end up costing him money in bandwidth.
But it's a fair trade-off for him.
"I may be reaching here, but I wouldn't put it past Lars to actually approve of the parody because it exposes the Internet for what it is," he said, meaning the kind of place where even legitimate news sites might run with the story without a second thought.
"The real irony," said Ashley, "is that none of our songs use E and F in that order."
mouldy_bread
18 Jul 2003, 15:52
Originally posted by go team
even triple m wouldn't be that stupid, would they?
Well it was on the Friday Chaser bit, those guys are morons..
And so am I it seems! :eek:
Originally posted by mouldy_bread
What the hell is that?
I heard it on Triple M at work today.
It's that crap on fox fm. No doubt they fell for it as well.
Morons!
Some people are too gullible! LOL
© and © ScoopThis.com "Because if it's on the net, it's got to be true" (ie, this is a parody.)
Docker_Brat
18 Jul 2003, 17:21
Originally posted by M29
On what? The hot 30 count down?
They'd fall for a hoax like that, so that'd be understandable.
(I'm not putting it past metallica, or any other band to do something like this, but come on...)
I think you summed it up in the last sentence, Lars is such a money grubbing prick that the story was beleivable to many.
Originally posted by Docker_Brat
I think you summed it up in the last sentence, Lars is such a money grubbing prick that the story was beleivable to many.
Exactly right, so self-absorbed these days that this sort of stuff would surprise nobody, least of all those who have been fans since the late 80s and have seen them degenerate into the type of corporate rock giant they once denounced.
Uncle_Leo
19 Jul 2003, 03:13
Uncle Leo finds it absoloutely amazing that anyone could say Metallica died the day Dave Mustaine was kicked it. What garbage!
Originally posted by Darky
Exactly right, so self-absorbed these days that this sort of stuff would surprise nobody, least of all those who have been fans since the late 80s and have seen them degenerate into the type of corporate rock giant they once denounced.
It's this sort of thing that's led me to not buy the last two albums & download the current one. NAPSTER LIVES LARS YOU PRICK!
Phil Doyle
23 Jul 2003, 05:46
Originally posted by go team
even triple m wouldn't be that stupid, would they?
having worked with people from Austereo I can categorically say that your running shoes probably have a higher intelligence than the vast majority of their producers and programmers.
Yes. They are that stupid. And then some.
great publicity for unfaithful. i wonder if lars wants a cut of their album sales?
Originally posted by noodle
great publicity for unfaithful. i wonder if lars wants a cut of their album sales?
The "news" was on the Unfaith website.
That being the case, i wonder if Unfaith are an actual band or just part of the hoax? I couldn't find any of their stuff on Kazaa.