They’re the same old blocks that used to be made for everyone (except for the pink ones).It’s just the marketing has changed. I’m pretty sure BB has posted ads from the 70s and early 80s showing this.
I’m not sure including boys loses a niche. Informally, amongst the half-dozen or so age 6 and unders I know, the girls will happily switch between princesses and Hot Wheels. It’s the boys who freak out about girl stuff having cooties. To me that’s just another argument for more gender neutral toys, but hey, I’m the only girl of three kids, so I was trained to prefer gender neutral anyhow.
Wait, wouldn’t that be an argument for more “girly” stuff just marketed to all genders? This whole “pink, sparkly, UGH GROSS” thing has a serious undertone of de-valuing all things coded as female. And there are boys who like pink and sparkly, for that matter.
I was just trying to say that all legal arguments aside, opening a dialogue is better and easier than litigation… If these folks had approached the record label and said “hay we love that beastie song that makes fun of female stereotypes, we think we can tastefully parody it to help us get our anti pink menace thing out there, yeah?” this would have turned out totally differently.
I hate that artistry in whatever form, be it a toy or a song, has to be an armed camp surrounded by lawyers. If we can’t all just get along, can we at least make a damn phone call or email first and give community a try before preemptive lawsuits enter the picture?
I had the same thought. I can’t tell if I’m clouded by the haze of my own bias (I definitely side[d] with the Beastie Boys here) – as someone else mentioned, people seemed to be coming down on whatever side because they had an [unofficial] affiliation or affection with the other side. I thought what GoldieBlox was doing was cool until I heard/found out that it was done without permission … then I went straight to the BBoys’ side. (I initially thought maybe the BB’s helped them do the parody or something).
They say they are big fans, yet they didn’t know about MCA’s wishes? Possible. But I certainly knew about it.
But anyway, I can’t tell if my own projection/perception of GoldieBlox – that of them (continuing to) play the victim – is my own bias at work, or is there a shred of truth to it …
It’s really hard to be objective in this case – to see past what we “see” and just be objective. I guess as long as one has an allegiance, it’s impossible to be so.
While I agree with your general point, if she’s got a brother, she may have more chance of hanging on to the ‘pretty toy’ than to a ‘boy toy’… The reverse may also be true for her brother.
Non-issue. Why should siblings of opposite sex be any less subject to “borrowing” than siblings of same sex? My brother and I coped and learned. Brother and sister can cope and learn just as well.
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I hate that artistry in whatever form, be it a toy or a song, has to be an armed camp surrounded by lawyers. If we can’t all just get along, can we at least make a damn phone call or email first and give community a try before preemptive lawsuits enter the picture?[/quote]
I love that. It describes exactly why this situation is so irksome to me. I do believe in the wonders of openness, sharing, collaboration, etc… That said, I don’t think that using ‘fair use’ as a free-for-all card to be rude and dismissive of fellow artists’ creations and vision is cool. I would never think of using another artist’s work for my own business without asking them first. This isn’t about fear of litigation, it is first and foremost because I think it would be uncivil to just grab someone else’s stuff (unless it is clearly and squarely public domain). To me, ‘fair use’ ought to encourage a spirit of collaboration and creativity, not plundering other artists right under their noses and sticking out your tongue at them if they have issues with it.
If I love an artist enough to want to work with their creations’ and they’re alive and on the same planet, you be damn sure I’d pick up a phone or fire an email. It’s not about the law, it’s about respect.
Sure. And when a label, rather than the band itself, actually owns the rights? Or some third party who bought the rights as part of some convoluted deal? Or the grandson of the grandchild of the artist (because life+70)?
Most of the time you would not be dealing with the original artist. You’d be dealing with some asshat(s) who added no value whatsoever, yet still gets to control and milk the piece for what is effectively in perpetuity.
In this case, the artists themselves did not want their song used that way. They weren’t hard to find. It’s not some big evil corp against innocent little artist story.
I have more an objection to Goldiblox’s posture as adoring fans who wistfully wished to bring joy to the world. I simply think that theirs is a poor representation of a relationship between a fan or collaborator and an artist. If YOU personally loved an artist- again, who is alive and on the grid- and wanted to use their work for revenue, what would be your first impulse? Wouldn’t you at least make a tiny effort to try notifying them?
All I’m saying is that I would not be comfortable not doing it, by any means. I would feel it were cavalier if others didn’t bother trying to reach me before using my work, even though I allow people to use my art for free left and right. But most of them ask and I’m always very grateful that they do. It’s a tiny, simple, civil thing to do. I only hope that in the struggle to make material more open and available for sharing (which I completely agree can be a wonderful thing) simple acts of communication and civility won’t get tossed aside.
If they’d just done the song to do the song you’d be right- and the Beasties wouldn’t have had an issue with it. But when you do something like that, then immediately file a lawsuit upon getting a polite inquiry, there’s a lot less to defend here.
They paid the artist for that privilege. That IS value added, in terms of funding the artist and allowing them to continue to spend time producing art.
If you don’t like that mechanism, fine – work directly with artists yourself. But you don’t get to declare the artist’s rights – including their right to sell or licence their rights – null and void because you don’t like who bought from them.
“Love” isn’t a simple binary, it comes in many different shades (at least 50, apparently). Further, your personal feelings about the BBs are largely irrelevant.
That’s correct. Engaging with the rights holder – whether you love them, detest them, or whatever – is a business transaction. Advertising is a business transaction. If you’re going to do business, do it right, which in this case means making sure the rights are cleared before you publish. Period.
If you do happen to love them, or love the artist if that’s a different entity, that’s reason to make sure you have the artist’s permission IN ADDITION TO clearing any legal rights.
GoldiBlox apparently did neither. There is no angle from which the GoldieBlox decision to try to shortcut those processes is anything but a cheap-ass attempt to dodge paying licencing fees. Or incompetence. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming incompetence.
They’re a small company and I’m pretty sure they don’t have an in-house legal department that can spin their wheels doing this sort of stuff. Orrick is outside counsel, and it’s not cheap. They’re probably getting billed at least $500/hour, and you don’t get them to draft a suit just because you think it’s possible you might get sued. The more likely approach would be to have run the ad idea/song past counsel before going ahead and producing the song & ad, in which case counsel almost certainly would have advised against it.
Not quite sure how my eager beaver in a coffee-cubby got spun into an entire legal department but I concede that it would be nigh on impossible to be that ready to react and also to ask the company’s skyscraper full of hired, legal-superheroes to immediately draft an infinitely large and complex document.
You can’t copyright an idea, which is why your model idea is not protectable. But you can copyright how those ideas are expressed, and the protection can extend to the style of the expression. For example, in Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., a movie poster for Moscow on the Hudson was found to have infringed on The New Yorker magazine’s cover art. Because of the stylistic similarities between the two pieces this wasn’t merely copying the idea, but copying the style, which is a protected component of expression. It’s also interesting to note that the court held that the movie poster was not parodic fair use, because it was just generally satirizing a general New-York-centric view of the world, and not commenting specifically upon the New Yorker cover itself.
i never watched their commercial. i’d still sue them until i got blood from that stone. to find the stone, i’d initiate proceedings and start interviewing potential witnesses. with help, the money they used to start their ‘business’ could be tracked. long arm of the law makes scamming really difficult to consider.
