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.
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.