GoldieBlox learns a lesson in engineering bad PR

I'll explain it then, and see if you come back on the train.

If you don't like the word racism, substitute it with imperialism, or colonialism. But it's the same thing. One elite power asserting its will over another.

It's either a group of elitists who don't want to pay for content, in the case of GoldieBlox, or it's the cloud storage owners of Big Data who want all information to be free-- including the information created by people in developing nations, African Americans, and those who by and large cann't afford to give their content away but find they have no choice.

Big Data, Big Tech, and Torrent sites are by and large owned and run by white males who understand whoever owns content is king. By and large they do not create content, themselves. They store it and distribute it. This is how Kim Dot Com became a billionaire. There is very little diversity in this group of content storage owners. It's the same as in advertising. It's not the world of Benetton. And this is a crying a shame.

But think about it for a second:

Who are the ones perpetuating the "information should be free," mantra? The group of people who can most afford to buy it.

Again, they don't see infringement as a problem because they don't create content. Their livelihood isn't dependent upon someone actually buying it. Instead they tell the content creators to "sell t-shirts," at the merch table or "find another job and adjust to our business model." This case happens to be the Beastie Boys and you may well argue they can "afford to give up their music." Yeah they can, but should they is the larger question.

Now tell me, what if instead, we substituted the Beasties with say, an unknown but aspiring African American musician, struggling to get by, or a group of aboriginal singers in a developing nation. Do they have the luxury to adapt to the "information should be free" business model? Of course not.

To fit Spotify's business model means you accept a terms of service that makes content creators broke, and content storage owners rich. How many struggling musicians and artists around the world can do this? Certainly not ones coming from backgrounds that are different from Northern California.

Remember, most of the these music streaming business models (let alone big tech models in general) aren't yet financially effective. Spotify is not an effective business model; it stays solvent by paying out much less to the people who create the content. And content creators have no choice but to to go along with this.

Racism, imperialism, colonialism of content. Choose your word, but either way its' still oppression.

The thing is, the person who created GoldieBlox is herself a marketer. She saw the 'girl power' opportunity and ran with it. Can't blame them for trying.

The tactic of "girls love narrative play," however, is backfiring as much as any goodwill they lost vis a vis the Beasties. Feminists are upset about it, 'geeks' are upset about it, and people who are pro-content are upset, too.

Spotify is in part owned by record labels, yes. They don't give a toss about making Spotify solvent, nor do they care about the artists on their roster. They're just looking out for their own best interests as always. Robber Barons 4 Eva

We're all familiar with Campbell VS. Acuff-Rose because everyone has been quoting from it. They are however, leaving out a crucial sentence from the decision: 'the use of a copyrighted work to advertise a product, even in a parody, will be entitled to less indulgence' under the law than 'the sale of a parody for its own sake'.

Meaning, that case set a precedent but the decision was not without qualifiers.