Remaining Beastie Boys members Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Michael “Mike D” Diamond have been intent on preserving the wishes and legacy of the late Adam “MCA” Yauch as best they can, whose will stipulated that, much like the stance that the Beastie Boys have maintained throughout their career, their music not be used in advertisements. So when Monster Energy Drinks went ahead and did just that, without permission to boot, brows were certainly furrowed.
We reported a mere week-and-a-bit ago that the Beasties were headed to court seeking copyright damages from Monster over the violations. And now that case has already been wrapped up, with a Manhattan federal court finding in favour of the Beastie Boys, in the kind of open-and-shut case you generally only see from a briefcase salesman.
Monster admitted wrongdoing in the issue, in using a Beastie Boys song on a promotional video that was available online for a total of 5 weeks. They insisted that they should only owe $125,000 for the transgression. The judge instead awarded the Beastie Boys damages to the tune of US$1.7million. BAM super nature, god damn.
It could have been slightly worse. When the case first started and the court asked the Beastie Boys so what-cha what-cha what-cha want? Their original estimate was US$2million.
So now Monster has learned a rather expensive lesson in copyright law, and the Beastie Boys have shown us once and for all that YOU GOTTA FIGHT. FOR YOUR RIGHT. TO (protect against third) PARRRRRRRTY (intellectual property misappropriations).
Photo: Fabrice Coffrini via Getty Images.
