Beastie Boys vs. GoldieBlox?
The iconic music group and Bay Area-based toy company could be in for a legal battle as a result of the latter's use of the tune to the band's song "Girls" in a commercial that went viral.
GoldieBlox, which describes itself as a company "buidling games for girls to inspire future engineers," filed a complaint for declaratory judgement and injunctive relief in United States District Court in San Francisco on Nov. 21. Specifically to "vindicate the rights of toy company GoldieBlox in connection with a parody video set to the tune of the Beastie Boys’ highly sexist song 'Girls.'"
The band released an open letter in reponse to the complaint Monday:
Like many of the millions of people who have seen your toy commercial “GoldieBlox, Rube Goldberg & the Beastie Boys,” we were very impressed by the creativity and the message behind your ad. We strongly support empowering young girls, breaking down gender stereotypes and igniting a passion for technology and engineering.
As creative as it is, make no mistake, your video is an advertisement that is designed to sell a product, and long ago, we made a conscious decision not to permit our music and/or name to be used in product ads.
When we tried to simply ask how and why our song “Girls” had been used in your ad without our permission, YOU sued US.
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The commericial, which is titled "GoldieBlox, Rube Goldberg, & Beastie Boys "Princess Machine" (a concert for little girls)," has been viewed over 8 million times on YouTube.
NBC Bay Area's Vicky Nguyen sat down with GoldieBlox founder Debbie Sterling in 2012 after she raised nearly $300,000 through Kickstarter to bring her product to market. var nbcLP={};nbcLP.aRandomNumber=Math.floor(Math.random()*10000);nbcLP.currentPageLoc=encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);nbcLP.currentSiteLoc=encodeURIComponent(window.location.host);nbcLP.defaultWidth=652;nbcLP.defaultHeight=367;nbcLP.cmsID="173840291";nbcLP.vidPid="0_8wE0N6Yy2_";nbcLP.vidSec="TK";nbcLP.vidSubSec="TK";nbcLP.vidFrame=document.getElementById("nbcLP173840291");nbcLP.vidFrame.style.border="none";nbcLP.vidFrame.width=nbcLP.defaultWidth;nbcLP.vidFrame.height=nbcLP.defaultHeight;nbcLP.vidFrame.scrolling="no";nbcLP.vidFrame.src="http://www.nbcbayarea.com/templates/nbc_partner_player?cmsID="+nbcLP.cmsID+"&videoID="+nbcLP.vidPid+"&width="+nbcLP.defaultWidth+"&height="+nbcLP.defaultHeight+"&sec="+nbcLP.vidSec+"&subsec="+nbcLP.vidSubSec+"&turl="+nbcLP.currentSiteLoc+"&ourl="+nbcLP.currentPageLoc+"&rand="+nbcLP.aRandomNumber;
