Category: Digital Culture

Beastie Boys Sue GoldieBlox

I have to admit to feeling a measure of sympathy for Debbie Sterling, CEO of GoldieBlox, who now finds her company at the receiving end of a suit by The Beastie Boys for acting with “oppression, fraud, & malice” in the misuse of the band’s song “Girls.”  Why the sympathy?  Because I watched Sterling’s TED talk in which she relates the story of her pursuit of an engineering degree and the founding of the GoldieBlox brand, and I think two things:  1) the world needs entrepreneurs with her sensibilities; and 2) somebody has given her some really bad  advice.

The probability that GoldieBlox actively endeavored to use legal controversy itself as a marketing tool is very high.  After all, on the same day the Beastie Boys made inquiry into the use of their song, GoldieBlox filed for declaratory and injunctive relief predicated on a claim of fair use of “Girls” as a parody.  It’s almost as though some lawyers had already prepared the filing in anticipation of a dispute.  Ya think?  Then, the EFF and Techdirt come out smug as ever, wagging fingers at The Beastie Boys and declaring the obviousness of fair use in this case despite the fact that there is rarely anything obvious about fair use, and particularly when a work is used in the form of advertising.  Meanwhile, most professional editorials and general comments from the public tended to favor the Beastie Boys, demonstrating to GoldieBlox that there really is such a thing as bad publicity, and so the company re-released the same video sans “Girls” and also issued a rather cloying apology, saying effectively, “Gosh, we’re sorry, we’re just a fledgling company, please don’t hurt us. We love you!”

Despite what was looking like a PR fiasco, the suit now facing GoldieBlox is at least partly based on the premise that the company’s use of both the song “Girls” and the Beastie Boys name contributed to a significant increase in sales.  After all, if drawing the foul was a tactical PR move, then that’s trading on the Beasties as a brand in addition to using their song without permission.  It will be interesting to see where this leads, but I am sorry to see a business that appears to be founded on some good ideas make such a dumb mistake.  I don’t think GoldieBlox has a leg to stand on with its fair use claim, and if they decide to fight that particular battle, I suspect Ms. Sterling is going to begin to wonder how she got quite so far away and so quickly from the business she meant to be running.  After all, she isn’t in the parody business, which has a lot to do with why this approach is so likely to backfire.

ADDENDUM:  WTF?  I refer you to the Trichordist reporting that Goolge Books lawyer Daralyn Durie is representing GoldieBlox in this, which is some high-octane legal muscle for a tiny little startup.  As indicated above, did Debbie Sterling really mean to get into the “copyfight” business? Because this is her life now.  Ah well.  I’m sure there’s another woman engineer out there interested in inspiring young girls to pursue math and science.

What’s in a Search Result?

Ukranians faced off riot police yesterday in Independence Square, a tense scene that ended peacefully for now, with police forces withdrawing.  The protests are sparked by anger over president Viktor Yanukovich’s apparent stonewalling on signing a trade deal with the EU that would further emancipate the fledgling democracy from its former Soviet occupiers.  The pact would bring badly needed investment into the nearly-bankrupt country of 46 million and help break the stranglehold Russia has on its industrial sector as the sole supplier of natural gas.  Meanwhile, what are Americans and other citizens who enjoy diverse economies quibbling about?  What movies are available online of course.

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My colleague at Vox Indie, Ellen Seidler brought it to my attention that a Google search for “movie piracy” will presently bring up as the second result an October 15th article written by Timothy B. Lee, a libertarian with views generally hostile toward copyrights.  Lee offers yet another variation on the message “piracy is a reaction against industry failure” by pointing to a handful of top movies that are supposedly unavailable to stream or purchase online through paid services yet. Although the central fact is exaggerated — some of the movies cited are available — Lee unblushingly quotes fellow libertarian and team leader of Piracydata.org, Jerry Brito, thus:

“The MPAA is complaining that Google leads people to infringing links, but what’s the alternative?” The movies that are available on file-sharing sites, he says, are “very rarely available for legal acquisition.”

Oh the humanity!  What is the alternative indeed?  What will my long-suffering fellow countrymen do of an evening if they cannot find a recently released movie on demand? Are they to risk carpal tunnel searching aimlessly?  Or watch something else, like maybe a film with an older release date?  Or (perish the thought) read something????  What is the point of living in a free and culturally diverse society?  What is this, Ukraine??

If you’re an American, everything about this search result should worry you, and everything it’s communicating should embarrass you. As for the worrisome part, if you read Ellen Seidler’s post about Lee and Brito and the Mercatus Center, the information-control process looks like this:  a user types in a broad search term like “movie piracy,” Google ensures that this pro-piracy article is the number two result, and the body of the article promotes the agenda of from an organization that is heavily funded by anti-labor, anti-civil-liberties forces like the Koch Brothers.   As many of us keep saying, the anti-copyright agenda is effectively an anti-fair-trade, anti-labor, anti-collective-bargaining agenda disguised as a pro-liberty agenda, and that brings us to the part that should embarrass you.  Because this message only works if you the user really believe that instant, round-the-clock access to all content is a right tantamount to a civil liberty.   If you honestly believe that, read about Ukraine this week. This is a nation hungry for a diverse economy, and I’ll bet the Ukranians would dearly enjoy a rich IP sector modeled after countries like the U.S., where artists are rewarded instead of, you know, jailed.  By contrast, people like Lee and Brito sound a hell of a lot like my kids complaining that there’s nothing to watch on television.

Jaron Lanier warns against “digital passivity”

Once again, computer scientist, author, and musician Jaron Lanier passionately addresses ways in which digital age toys and apps offer illusions of empowerment and greater freedom while in fact limiting both.  This article was shared by reader Mike Katell, who also offered a thoughtful comment in response to my post as to why I’m not losing sleep over the revelations of Edward Snowden.  Some misinterpreted that post as advocating apathy about government surveillance, but that wasn’t the point at all.  As echoed in this editorial by Lanier, the post was about questioning an overreaction to perceived government surveillance while simultaneously volunteering ourselves to surveillance through fun gadgets linked to large, corporate-owned computers.

From Lanier’s article:

“To be free is to have a private zone in which you can be alone with your thoughts and experiments. That is where you differentiate yourself and grow your personal value. When you carry around a smartphone with a GPS and camera and constantly pipe data to a computer owned by a corporation paid by advertisers to manipulate you, you are less free. Not only are you benefiting the corporation and the advertisers, you are also accepting an assault on your free will, bit by bit.”

 Read full article at the New York Times here.