[j r]

A Silicon Valley startup called GoldieBlox, armed with seed funding and money from a successful Kickstarter campaign, is marketing a line of overpriced and reportedly not very good toys that are supposed to get girls interested in engineering. They released a viral video (also known as a commercial) that got picked up and touted in all the usual SWPL feminst-friendly media sites.

In the video they re-work the Beastie Boys classic "Girls" to fit their girls empowerment message (although I guess only the wealthy girls get to be empowered; here's what fifty bucks gets you: http://www.amazon.com/Goldie-Blox-BT002-...ldieblox). The Beasties have a longstanding policy of not licensing their music for commercial use; this was even in MCA's will. GoldiBlox, since they are a "disruptive" company, said fuck that and are actually preemptively suing the Beastie Boys for the right to appropriate the Beasties intellectual property. The argument is that the GoldoBlox version of the song falls under fair use as a parody of the original.

Here's a good take on this by Felix Salmon, who usually leans a bit left for my taste, but really nails it here: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/20...isruption/

Here is Electronic Frontier Foundation defending GoldieBlox's use of the song: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/be...e-lawsuit. It's funny that these geek/tech-policy types have the balls to stand up to the NSA and big corporations, but get completely stupid when someone mentions feminism or raises the specter of misogyny. The EFF post reads like something written by a college sophomore for the school paper.

[AntiTrace]

They need to be told what to do. They need to be told "This is a toy for girls, buy it for your girl". They could easily go buy any single "engineering" toy out there, but they need one specifically for girls which contradicts their disagreement with male oriented engineering toys.

Secondly, a toy given to a 6 year old doesn't get them interested in engineering. Its a fucking toy. It will get them interested in playing with toys. I played with power rangers as a kid but I'm not dressing up in brightly colored spandex and roundhouse kicking clay monsters am I?

People are so stupid it is depressing.

I wont even touch the beasties issue, I'm sure some lawyer (male) will bitch slap them with a dose of reality mixed with the law.

[zwyjibo]

It's a close call with good arguments on both sides. On one hand, it is a parody - a work that uses elements of the original work to make light of its contents and message - as opposed to a satire, which uses elements of the original work to make fun of something else. Generally, parody is afforded higher fair use protection, even when it is for a commercial use. In contrast, satire tends to not be fair use when it is used commercially. In theory, being a parody is not a bar to liability for copyright infringement when used commercially. In practice, courts tend to find parodies, even commercial ones, are almost always non-infringing fair use. If this doesn't settle quickly I could see it becoming an interesting appellate decision with a ton of amicus briefs on both sides of the issue - Google, FB, MPAA, RIAA, etc.

[Laner]

I seen this last week on my friends wife facebook where she talks about her daughters becoming engineers. Her and her feminist mother friends acted like this was the last barrier to their daughters becoming engineers.

My friend had kept his mechano sets and had given them to his one daughter who exhibits more masculine traits. She had zero interest in them.

Parents have to realize that you cant force their ideals on to kids. Kids have natural inclinations and should be respected.

As for the Beastie Boys..... Adam Yauch is spinning in his grave. Taking one of their funnest hormonal driven songs and turning it into gurl power hate is bullshit. I do hope they get crushed. This is no Youtube mashup. Its a commercial for a toy with a very obvious agenda in mind.

[germanico]

"Line of toys to get girls interested in science"

Because regular legos wont do. We need Femlegos to promote Femscience. With pretty pink princesses. Of course, that does not conflicts with the fact that princesses are a symbol of subyugation to the oligocentric patriarchy. And that associating the color pink with girls is sexist.

By the way, thats some masterfull trolling. Sueing the Beasty Boys for the right to appropiate their song for commercial use will give them a lot of free publicity with the herb crowd that would buy this kind of chinese made plastic shit to their daughters. I bet a bunch of them already preordered the premium pack of plastic turds because "Fuck RIAA and MPAA".

[ms224]

Having suffered through engineering school, (and not MIT/stanford level kindergarten).

One has to ask, how the fuck does this bratty bitch get money and all the thousands of people with interesting ideas
in state schools don't even get the time of day?

BTW, here is this bitch's blog about traveling in india.

Debbie does India

Don't see anything engineering in there.