Metallica Sue Canadian Band over E, F Chords

Dr4gul4

This is the final straw anybody who goes to see this band should be shot as an EX-metallica fan i find this to be a joke gone to far on their behalf, what da feck do they think they are doing.

See what u guy make of it


Metallica are a bunch of tits


Dave

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OMFG, The retards!

Stark

oh ****, and I have a ticket to see the bastards. (what to do, what to do).

Tazz T

That's mental!!!!

I've been using those chords longer than them. I'm gonna sue them back.:p

Dr4gul4

Originally posted by k.oriordan
oh ****, and I have a ticket to see the bastards. (what to do, what to do).

i was goin to say burn it so nobody else will buy it but they dont deserve ure money so get a refund


D.

padraigmyers

That has to be a pisstake, the link to Metallica website just goes to another page on the same site. Think about it, doesn't it sound a bit ridiculous?

Stark

Yeah checked it out, scoopthis is a pisstake website like the onion. All the links are to mtv.com and like the previous poster said the link to the metallica website points to a doctored version of their website. No mention of it on the real metallica website.

What's worrying though is I wouldn't put it past them if they could get away with it.

Puck

Um... you guys do realise that you're reading scoopthis.com and not mtv.com right (the clue's in the address bar lads)?

It's not real. Mildly amusing ok, but not real.

Dr4gul4

looks like a fake is right i missed the url me self lol Doh !! any way very funny and it really wouldnt surprise me 1 bit


D.

kano476

uh well if you look at the unfaith website it simply says: "an official statement reguarding the metallica controversy will soon be issued in our newsletter" http://www.unfaith.net i seriously wouldnt put it past metallica to do something like that. could still be a fake tough.

why is it when your stinking rich all you want is more money?

Lemming

Originally posted by kano476
uh well if you look at the unfaith website it simply says: "an official statement reguarding the metallica controversy will soon be issued in our newsletter" http://www.unfaith.net i seriously wouldnt put it past metallica to do something like that. could still be a fake tough.

why is it when your stinking rich all you want is more money?

*sigh*
if you (or anyone else) has rights on something, and you don't defend those rights whenever they're breached, they can be ruled null and void on the grounds of being 'selective' about applying your rights in a court of law.

And anyway, this is not the first time they've [Metallica] taken people to task over this (infringrment, not chords)

TBH, sounds like an el-cheapo PR stunt.

0wn3d su<k3rs :rolleyes:

feylya

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.

50%? That has to be a piss take. No court in the world would give 50% because of the use of two chords, especially considering they're the two most popularly used chords in rock music.

"We intend to enforce our rights with any band intending to use Metallica-branded chords in the future."

"Metallica-branded chords"? They gonna start selling those now in little boxes that you have to buy every time you want to use an open string in a song? Stinks of a pisstake to me.

Kone

It is a piss take you idiot!

feylya

But in all honesty. it is a good one. Even the Unfaith website is pretty convincing with the thing on their front page. I read this on guitar.com last night and thought it was a pisstake but I'm only out of bed so you could say the earth is a square and I'm probably believe ya.

cournioni

Yeah saw it on pantera.com BB yesterday, obvious piss take.

Karl Hungus

Saw this on metalireland.com already.
Obvious pisstake indeed!

de5p0i1er

Not even they would stoop this low, would they.

padraigmyers

Not even they would stoop this low, would they.

Have you not read all the other posts?

ITS A PISSTAKE

Lemming

Originally posted by padraigmyers
ITS A PISSTAKE

For those who are not very adept at understanding the english language:

"Piss take": Fake, Forgery, Not True, Horse-Sh*t, Bull-Sh*t, etc.

:rolleyes:


Actually, I think it makes Unfaith look really f*cking pathetic that they have to live off another band's name to try and generate some press for themselves.

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by Lemming
For those who are not very adept at understanding the english language:

"Piss take": Fake, Forgery, Not True, Horse-Sh*t, Bull-Sh*t, etc.

:rolleyes:

So you're saying that it's not real?
Anyway, was this the same crowd that faked the "Eminem dies in car crash" story a while back?

Karl Hungus

Jesus lads, take a look at this and calm the **** down.

cournioni

Originally posted by AngelWhore
Jesus lads, take a look at this and calm the **** down.

That is obviously a fake.

byte

/me roffles

Pugsley

We all know about the Napster issue, the perfume company, the tire makers, Metallica has sued them all," he said

Ok i know all about the napster thing, but whats this perfume and tyre thing about?

Quote taken from Angelwhores link btw

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(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."

Thats the story, for people who dont want another window to open!

You'd wonder why he went to so much trouble though!

Lemming

Originally posted by Pugsley
Ok i know all about the napster thing, but whats this perfume and tyre thing about?

THe perfume thing is about "Victorias Secrets" selling lipstick n'stuff with the Metallica ninja-star logo without permission. Fair enough - clear violation there.

The tyre maker thing though, I haven't heard about.

nellieswellies

I reckon its a blatent publicity stunt designed to get attention for the band

Sleipnir

yeah it's a hoax alright.

Link to Snopes, Urban Legends database

padraigmyers

I'm always intrigued by these people who come along about 2 weeks later and let us know what we knew all along.

Sleipnir

I'm always intrigued by people who know something, but have to come back to remind themselves they still know it!

padraigmyers

I came back in to see if someone had posted a reply to explain what the tyre thing
was about, only to find someone revealing that gem of info that the Canadian band
story is is a HOAX! You did read the other posts before you posted didnt you?