In the past seven months, GoldieBlox has raised more than $285,000 on Kickstarter, garnered millions of views for a video about its toys (thanks in part to a brilliant re-imagining of the Beastie Boys’ song “Girls”), pre-sold more than a million dollars’ worth of products, and parlayed that groundswell of support into winning a contest for a Super Bowl commercial slot.
Somewhat related to my earlier commentary about ownership of Intellectual Property in the modern Internet era, there’s something about the way that Laura’s story at Wired glosses over the unauthorized use of the Beastie Boys’ music – and the kerfuffle that followed – that sticks in my head. Elsewhere in the same piece, it’s referred to as an “incident,” which strikes me as… I don’t know. An overly polite way to refer to it, I guess?
I don’t mean that as a slam on Laura, because (a) I think she’s more in tune with the prevailing culture about this than I am, and (b) to go into more detail would entirely derail her Wired piece, which is about something else entirely.
We’re in a strange point of time when intent can override condemnation for particular sins, in terms of content, I think. Like, Goldieblox can be forgiven for (at best) misunderstanding the legalities around using copyrighted music in commercials because the overall aim of the company is something that we support. Or something like Something Terrible, which features appropriations of characters and concepts owned by plenty of other people – sold for profit as a print and Kickstartered as a graphic novel, so it’s something other than simple fan-fic like JL8 or Jean & Scott – is allowed because… fair use? Maybe?
I’m not really talking about legalities (although I remain curious whether or not Something Terrible’s use of Batman means that it could never be properly published by anyone other than Warners), but… the fan community’s response, perhaps? The way that the Internet moves the goalposts of what is justifiable in terms of IP theft and what isn’t, I guess.
We’ve seen arguments that information wants to be free, man, and counter-arguments that all work should be credited and creators properly rewarded for their work. We’ve got a culture that’s constantly contradicting itself over piracy and finding new justifications for downloading Game of Thrones instead of paying for an HBO subscription or whatever, even as it complains about a t-shirt company stealing an image from an artist. The obvious inference to be drawn is some kind of it’s okay to do it to a corporation but not to the little guy, but it’s something else, something both simpler and more complex: it’s okay to do it when I think it’s okay to do it.
Or maybe not. This is less a statement than a ramble about a topic that I’m thinking about and haven’t come to terms with yet. There’re probably many places where I’m wrong and/or will change my mind. Right now, I’m in a mindset of “theft of content is theft of content,” regardless of whether or not the thieves are good guys or not. But maybe I’m wrong?
