In February 2005, we were served with a cease-and-desist order from Sony/ATV Publishing, who owns the Beatles catalog, for willful copyright infringement. We were not sued; we were being threatened with a lawsuit if we didn't cease all Beatallica activity and pay "an amount to be discussed" in damages. Word got out, lots of articles and blog entries were written about us, over 10,000 people signed an online petition, and soon Lars Ulrich from Metallica contacted us to offer his support. He enlisted one of his attorneys to negotiate with Sony on our behalf, and as a result they have chosen not to pursue legal action against us at this time (although they maintain their right to do so in the future.)

It turns out to be a lot more complicated than that. The legal notion of "parody" is different from the way you and I understand it. In order for a song to be a parody, it has to directly criticize or comment on the original artist or song. In other words, you can make a parody of a song by The Beatles that makes fun of The Beatles, and that's protected as "fair use"; the "2 Live Crew" case is an example of this.

If you use someone's work to make fun of someone else, that's not always protected. It's considered "satire," not "parody." A good example of this is the "Cat NOT in the Hat" case. So what this seems to mean is that most of Weird Al Yankovic's songs are not technically parodies. He doesn't have to worry about litigation though; he always asks permission to release his satirical songs (because he can afford to). Notice that Weird Al has never released a Beatles parody.

"Fair use" is a very fuzzy part of copyright law, decided on a case-by-case basis, so unfortunately the only way you can prove that what you're doing qualifies as fair use is to go to court.

The permanent members of Metallica (Kirk, Lars, and James) have mentioned in interviews that they'd heard Beatallica and enjoyed it, and as mentioned above, Lars has contacted us personally and says he loves what we do. We've heard nothing from the Beatles themselves, just Sony's lawyers.

But the important thing to realize is that the bands' opinions usually do not matter in the way the current music industry runs. For example, in the U2/Negativland case, the lawsuit was initiated by U2's record label, Island records, not the band itself. The band actually thought the Negativland track was pretty funny, but by the time Island let U2 know about the lawsuit, it was too late to stop it. Read Negativland's book for the whole sordid tale.

There aren't any CD's for sale, but the entire Beatallica oeuvre (so far) is here in mp3 format. Download and burn CD-R's to your heart's content. Just thrash and let the metal flow. We may offer CD's in the future, if we can get the licensing costs worked out.

But please... don't charge anyone for a copy of these tunes. We don't, so you shouldn't.

How can I show Beatallica my undying devotion?

Here's the contact information. You can also post your comments to our Bulletin Board; Jaymz and Krk post there frequently, and they love to hear from the fans.

Can I play them on my radio show/podcast/etc.?

Sure! All of Beatallica's music is released under a Creative Commons license; you are free to broadcast, copy, sample, or do anything you want with the music as long as it's not for a commercial purpose. And since Beatallica is not a member of ASCAP or BMI, it won't cost you anything either.