I’m not sure who this sticks it hardest to — The Man or his former bandmates — but Adam “MCA” Yauch’s will apparently included a handwritten addition stating that he does not want the work he left behind used in advertising.
“Notwithstanding anything to the contrary, in no event may my image or name or any music or any artistic property created by me be used for advertising purposes,” Rolling Stone reports the note reads.
I can only assume that Yauch didn’t care much for the Apple “Think Different” campaign — the one that featured the likenesses of John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr and Gandhi — that ran during the 90s?
Coincidentally, the Beastie Boys sued Monster Energy yesterday over the unauthorized use of their songs in ads. Lawyers for the group accuse Monster of trying to align their brand with the Beastie Boys by improperly using their songs in a promotional campaign.
“The text accompanying Monster’s internet postings, video and MP3 conveyed to consumers the impression that Beastie Boys permitted the use of their name and intellectual property, and participated in connection with Monster’s promotion of its products and events,” the suit reads.
First up, the plaintiffs don’t want to see Monster Energy’s promotional video for its 2012 Ruckus in the Rockies event, which the suit claims was posted to the drink’s website in May, in its current incarnation ever again.
According to the complaint, the video is “comprised substantially of excerpts from the Beastie Boys Sound Recordings and the Beastie Boys Musical Compositions totaling more than three minutes in duration.”
The tunes in question include “Sabotage,” “So Whatcha Want” and “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun.”
So the question I still have is this: what if there’s a future ad campaign that the surviving members of the band would like to participate in? Could this turn out to be a dick move in the long run? Feel free to weigh-in in the comments, people with knowledge of this sort of thing.
(Image via “Fight For Your Right To Party” Video)
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Not a dick move. It’s called having integrity.
They can still use their music, they just have to bleep out all of MCA’s lyrics he sings. It’ll end up sounding like an Eminem record edited for Walmart.
Not necessarily. If they all shared the rights to their music equally, it doesn’t matter if Yauch’s voice is featured in the song or not. They would essentially have to buy Yauch’s rights to the music from his estate before they could use it (which the will would presumably prohibit).
That is, of course, assuming he had a share in all of the Beastie’s music rights.
/I knew my music business degree would come in handy some day!
A will doesn’t mean anything, only if MCA was owner of all the different rights.
Even if the rights to the music are shared, I would be surprised if a court upheld his addendum from preventing the other members from being able to use their property for advertisements if they want to. Courts don’t like “dead hand control” over property, especially where other people have an equitable interest in the property in question.