I'm surprised I'm the only person to a) write and/or suggest a related parody, and/or b) comment. I really hope that Beatallica wins this copyright infringement case. Do we really even need copyrights anymore? Someone's just gonna rip off or sample your songs anyway; you might as well deal with it! If you keep copyrighting songs, the courts will have more lawsuits then radio has hits (from any decade or radio format)! Rock on, Beatallica, and win this lawsuit... with Lars backing you up!

Of course they need copyrights! If they didn't other people could freely and easily use TOS w/o permission from the people who wrote/played/edited/marked/etc. the original music. I have not seen the Beatallica parodies, but unless they use obvious sampling or exact wording from a Metallica song I see them in the clear. Even people who make parodies for a living e.g. Weird Al ask ( usually ) for the original artists permission before making the music or video. I must sadly agree you are correct that copyright infringement is a VERY low priority for law enforcement. Copyrights to me are very much like patents, while you can't "patent" a song ( or parody ), you use someones patent too closely and you will probably get slammed for doing so.

I think the real issue here is that copyrights last too long. Disney decided to lengthen the copyrights for things like movies, just so they could milk the worth of Mickey for another 50 years or so. Doesn't it seem like cartoons as old as the original Mickey Mouse cartoons (which began in the 1920s) should be public domain by now? As for music, the earliest material by the Beatles is about 40 years old now. Copyrights should either maintain their current length or be shorten, because if companies like Disney keep wielding their power over copyright laws, you'll never see any of this stuff become public domain. To use an extreme example, imagine what the world of classical music would be like if Mozart's estate had the exclusive rights to his music. Wouldn't that suck?

Agreed, MrMacphisto. I can see the point you make on Mozart. Granted copyrights ( as far as I know ) weren't around then, but I'm fairly sure there are some living relatives of Mozart ( and many other great composers ) that enjoy people playing his music and do not want any money in return. As far as people who wrote TOS and are still alive, I can see them having a problem ( or their producers ) with people using a variation of their name, lyrics, or instrument samples. I STILL think that Beatallica will win though. Also agreed their should be a "limit" of some type on copyrights, just as there is usually a 5-7 year patent on medicines, but again it's a very low priority for law enforement.

i think that it is a great help! it helped me with my extra credit project of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! you are great!