Last year, toy startup Goldieblox made a splash with a fun commercial for its girl-centric engineering toys, reworking the lyrics of the Beastie Boys' "Girls" with female empowerment lyrics. For extra publicity, they filed a pre-emptive lawsuit against the group, seeking injunctive relief against a perceived threat of copyright infringement lawsuit. The Beastie Boys fired back, pointing out they don't do any advertising of any kind, and they finally sued Goldieblox, alleging "oppression, fraud, and malice." But now the two sides have finally settled, with Goldieblox agreeing to apologize and donate revenue to charities of the Beastie Boys' choice.
Goldieblox, which changed lyrics like "Girls - to do the dishes/ Girls - to clean up my room" to "Girls - to build the spaceship/ Girls - to code the new app," was arguing they could still run with their version of the song because it was a parody protected under fair use laws, but the Beastie Boys argued, "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."
The toy company has issued this statement about the agreement: “That settlement includes (a) the issuance of an apology by GoldieBlox, which will be posted on GoldieBlox’s website, and (b) a payment by GoldieBlox, based on a percentage of its revenues, to one or more charities selected by Beastie Boys that support science, technology, engineering and mathematics education for girls." The apology isn't up on the website yet, but Goldieblox did remove the "Girls" redo. It's definitely less fun—compare:
