By. Scot Kersgaard

Girls just want to build bridges. Oh, hey I’m ripping off a Cyndi Lauper song aren’t I? In the context of this blog I can do that. It’s called fair use, at least that’s what it’s called when I give her credit.

What if I riff on someone’s song to sell a product? And I don’t ask first? Well, without getting into the possible legal ramifications, it isn’t nice and it isn’t right and it is counterproductive.

GoldieBlox, one of our favorite social enterprises, found itself in a bit of a spitstorm these past few days when it rewrote a Beastie Boys song to use in a video promoting its line of toys. The Beastie Boys, to their credit, didn’t come unhinged, didn’t send in the restraining orders. Instead, they just basically said, “hey’s that’s not cool, please stop.” In return, they got sued by GoldieBlox, which alleged that its use of a Beastie Boys song was covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.

The media was not kind to GoldieBlox and GoldieBlox has since backed off from the suit and removed the song from its video.

Now, we love GoldieBlox. We love what they are doing—creating and selling engineering toys for girls.  Let’s face it, the more young girls who grow up playing with these toys and thinking they can be engineers and astronauts and builders, the more girls who will grow into women who are engineers and astronauts.

We also loved the original GoldieBlox video, which went viral. We love how it took originally offensive song lyrics about girls doing housework and turned the lyrics on their head, encouraging girls to build spaceships and create killer apps. It was righteous—and wrong at the same time. The song belonged to someone else.

Then, when the Beastie Boys said stop, GoldieBlox responds with a lawsuit. Even after dropping the suit, the company posts a letter on its website that is self-righteous and defensive. At seemingly every turn, GoldieBlox has done the wrong thing.

And we still love them. We believe in their mission. They will get through this and at the end of the day, the publicity will probably do them more good than harm. Had they responded to the Beastie Boys with contrition and humility, though, they would look a whole lot better right now.

For our other friends in the nonprofit and social enterprise worlds, a couple of free pointers:

• Ask before you appropriate someone else’s intellectual property.
• If you get caught in a situation like this, be humble. Take corrective action immediately. Do not make a bad situation worse by filing pointless suits and posting self-righteous explanations on your website.