The
GoldieBlox legal battle against the Beastie Boys over the band’s song “Girls” being used in a parody ads may be nearing an end. Today, GoldieBlox removed the original video, replaced it with one that no longer uses the Beastie Boys music and published an open letter to the band hoping for peace.
In a post titled “Our Letter to the Beastie Boys” posted on the GoldieBlox blog, the toy company says it has removed the song from its parody video and is willing to stop legal action it took to use the song as long as the Beastie Boys halt any legal threats.
“We don’t want to fight with you. We love you and we are actually huge fans,” the post says. It goes on: “Our hearts sank last week when your lawyers called us with threats that we took very seriously. As a small company, we had no choice but to stand up for ourselves. We did so sincerely hoping we could come to a peaceful settlement with you.”
The conflict started after a video ad by GoldieBlox using a reworked version of the Beastie Boys’ song “Girls” went viral with more than 8.6 million views since it was posted on November 17. GoldieBlox had never received approval from the Beasties Boys to use the song, and last week, a Beastie Boys representative reached out to the toy company in a private letter asking why the song had been used without the band’s permission.
According to the New York Times article, the Beastie Boys sent a letter to GoldieBlox stating:
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.
The original “Goldieblox, Rube Goldberg & Beastie Boys Princess Machine” video can no longer be accessed from GoldieBlox’s YouTube channel, with the video now tagged as Private.
A new one has been released in its place with different music:
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