Not to undermine the interesting fair use discussion, but I hope the Beastie Boys win, not because I side with them in this legal argument but because the less of their music I hear, the better.
For my entire life I’ve been baffled by their success. Each subsequent track rotated the cheese grater against my ear to a harsher and increasingly blunt setting. Each commercial success seemed to embolden them to produce an even bat-shitter song, as though they were testing how much much rancid, raw tripe they could feed the public while in turn being called sous-chefs.
All this really culminated in 1998; Intergalactic should be shipped on a rocket to any other Planetary than mine.
As a fan of most musical genres, as a person willing to give most anything a chance and an open ear, the Beatie’s stylings make even the last two lazy-ass Kanye albums or any of the more-obscure and blatantly self-indulgent Sonic Youth tracks, seem like masterpieces.
Even worse, here we are in 2013 and Eminem seems to be really indulging in taking obvious influence from them; when I first heard Berserk I immediately felt that late 90’s, Costco-sized Cuisinart come alive again, so I reached for the nearest ice-pick that would fit into my already scarred ear canal…
That said, after growing out of being purposefully obnoxious kids with privilege, fame and money (no blame there), they seemed to become great guys who spent their celebrity on worthwhile political causes.
I’d much rather to hear any of them pic up a mic to talk than sing. And I’d happily exchange hearing their music, the auditory equivalent of a rusty deep-sea fish hook probing my unlubricated urethra, if we could have Mr. Yauch back for a few more decades…
To be clear, I think Goldieblox is ethically and morally completely wrong from beginning to current development in this affair.
There is however a substantial body of law supporting the right of commercial use parody. (Hahahah you see what I… Ok, I’ll just stand over here quietly)
It’s good. It’s more justice. When this first went down - when we were first seeing the ad - I thought that the BB’s had given it their blessing (or perhaps even assisted in the ad). It was all good feelings - until we found out this was done without permission.
The BB’s response, for all we can tell, was very civil. The pre-emptive suit by Goldieblox was weird, for people who called themselves “fans”.
This just seems like what the BB’s should have done in the first place. The fact they took a ‘nice’ approach, initially, was, well, nice. It’s fitting they should bring out the big(ger) guns now. Good on them.
I don’t know. GB was in the wrong and played the whole thing pretty poorly, but it’s easy to imagine that they had no experience with this issue and were given some poor but well-meaning legal advice when they were first contacted by the BB lawyers. That letter looks like a search for a pause/rewind button once they realised that they were on the wrong side of a fight with people they fundamentally agreed with. The BBs had already established that they were in the right and that they were serious about the commercial use of their songs, so I don’t see what they had to gain from going any further.
Envelope pushed to sell units vs. artist wishes - envelope pushing good? Artist wishes paramount?
As discussed in earlier threads, it actually wasn’t their first time down this road. Marketing use of the Streisand effect (the reverse Streisand effect?) - Good? Bad?
This case is more than a “well meaning” parody. IMO They seem to have taken the “all publicity is good publicity” mantra to heart and used the Streisand Effect to their marketing advantage. Serious about their marketing? Sure, they were trying to sell units. In the right? Not sure about that one bloody bit.
And that’s what Goldieblox wanted you to think by putting the Beastie Boys name in the title of their toy commercial. The whole thing from beginning to end is less than savory on GB’s part.
It took GB less than 24 hours to file suit against the Beasties, but it’s been over 2 weeks since they claimed they’d drop the suit and they still haven’t. Hence the counter-suit.
You might not think a person’s dying wishes are a valid consideration, but you’re kind of missing my point.
I’m more concerned about GoldieBlox pretending they’re the Beastie Boys biggest fans while concurrently pretending ignorance of these wishes, cynically getting as much commercial traction as they possibly can out of this stunt, then trying to back-flip out of it without a scratch.
I personally could not care less if GoldieBlox lives or dies; but do remember the degree to which the law operates on precedent…
The defendant being a deeply unsympathetic character makes winning easier; but when they come after the next guy the tedious biographical details of the previous case will have been largely forgotten, and replaced by a precedent to the effect that doing what they did (whether or not you do it like they did) is illicit.
I’m not a big Beastie Boys fan, though there are a few songs I like, so this is not fanboyism. And I am the father of a 9 year old daughter who renovated our basement with me including ripping out sheetrock and nails, installing new walls, nailing trim, etc. So it’s not against GoldieBlox’s ideas.
But “Girls” was a parody of sexist songs itself. A horribly done parody that didn’t accomplish its goals no matter how over the top it was, but a parody none-the-less. The GB version didn’t parody that, but reinforce it.
That the song didn’t parody the original intent, the music sounds identical, the cadence and inflection of the vocals is the same, and the song length is within a few seconds indicates this is a cover more than fair use. Myself, I think that by now GIRLS should be in the public domain by now, that 20 years is far too long for copyright on music. But it’s not, and that’s current law.
Instead of arguing that the BBs are wrong or GB is right, maybe we should all focus on the fact that our copyright laws are whacked and need to change so this wouldn’t be an issue at all.
This whole thing is dumb. I see a lot of outrage about GB “suing” the BB. But suing for a declaratory judgment is not the same a suing for money. It’s one option when you are worried that someone is about to sue you, and you want to preempt that by getting a judge to declare that what you are doing is not infringement.
It can be very efficient. Red Hat did it to SCO and SCO more or less abandoned any attempts to pursue them.
But one thing that can derail a declaratory judgement is lack of controversy, i.e. the judge doesn’t believe anyone is really likely to sue you. Like the BB claim they weren’t threatening to do. So that would have indeed been the end point of this nonsense after GB backed down - up until the point when the BB did actually sue them.
There’s every chance both sides come out of it looking bad, with the fair use issue still not usefully decided one way or the other.
I think the correct term would be “satire” for the original song “girls”, if you really think “Licensed to Ill” was deep social commentary with songs like “Brass Monkey”. The fact that it does such a poor job of not being sexist, actually sets it up for parody. It might be a parody in poor taste, or even a dumb parody, but just because a parody is full of derp does not mean it’s not a parody. Parodies can be mean, insulting things that judges might take preference to in law to protect free speech, beyond the standard analysis of fair use. Theoretically, a particularly clever judge of a higher court could magically come up with wording that actually makes sense to people without a law change (it’s probably murky for a reason)…
Anyhow, the Beastie Boys just validated Goldieblox’s move for a summary judgement after they were playing innocent. Goldieblox has a right to make a parody of Girls in fair use, although if this is actually fair use has yet to be determined by a court. The fact that they attached an advertisement to the parody does not necessarily exclude it from being fair use, but it’s probably enough to prevent a judge from awarding a summary judgement. IANAL, but it generally sounds like that in a drawn out case Goldieblox would prevail (although their strategy seems to be to hedge on low cost risk meaning they’d likely settle).
… looks like all the parties are classy all around…
I Am Not A Lawyer, so I may be totally wrong here, but some notes from having watched some court cases:
a) A declaratory judgement suit DOES cost the other side money, between lawyers and potentially having to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees in exceptional cases (see Charles Carreon). IIRC, GoldieBlox specifically included “reasonable attorneys costs and fees” in their prayers for relief.
b) Once GoldieBlox killed the ad, they could have dismissed the suit without prejudice up until the point where the Beasties replied in court, meaning they could have refiled if the issue came up again/Beastie laywers started threatening. It would have cost GoldieBlox nothing legally to do so. They did not.
c) By not dismissing the lawsuit, the Beasties were legally obligated to file a reply unless they want to suffer a default judgement. They filed slightly early (I think they had 30 days, but I’m not sure), but they had to file a reply & counterclaims at about this time.
At this point, that the Beasties replied in court with a cannon rather than a pop-gun should surprise nobody. And GoldieBlox, for first rushing to the courthouse within a day and not filing a “dismiss w/o prejudice” when they had the chance, gets what they deserve.
The original meaning of “Girls” was actually a psychic parody of progressive white rappers stealing black cultural artifacts and getting rich. You can’t parody something if it already means that, so you better watch out or you might get sued.
Just came to say that BB took no exception to the parody “Squirrels”. Wouldn’t be surprised if this countersuit is to prevent BB material from being used in advertising. Well, and maybe because GB is a fairly crap toy. Plenty of other, reasonably ungendered, building toys out there that are far more versatile than GB.
of law supporting the right of commercial use parody. (Hahahah you see what I… Ok, I’ll just stand over here quietly)