Rap Genius Settles

I wrote about the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA)'s takedown action against fifty so-called "lyric sites" last November.

As a follow-up to that, it was announced earlier this week that RapGenius.com—one of those sites—has reached an agreement with the NMPA. While it's still unclear what they actually agreed to, I'm happy that Rap Genius is on the path toward becoming a licensed service. As Rap Genius Co-Founder Ilan Zechory put it: "The NMPA's members represent some of the best songwriters in the world. Rap Genius allows these songwriters to showcase their work and interact with their biggest fans in unprecedented ways—we couldn't be more excited about this partnership."

We'll have to wait to see the concept of "fair use" argued in court another time.

Beastie Boys and GoldiBlox Settle; GoldiBlox "Apologizes"

I've followed the copyright infringement battle between seminal rap group the Beastie Boys and upstart toy manufacturer GoldiBlox with great interest. (And not just because my close friend Brett Doar is the evil genius behind "The Princess Machine" in GoldiBlox's video, but also Rube Goldberg contraptions in the video for OK GO's song "It Too Shall Pass" and a host of others.)

As with all infringement cases, despite the fact that intellectual property is governed by law, the details can make a muddle of the situation. I won't rehash what I've written about this already (which you can check out here and here) but I wanted to point out this great piece by AdAge media columnist Simon Dumenco.

In it, Dumenco points out that as part of the settlement reached earlier, GoldiBlox was to apologize to the Beastie Boys. Yet befitting their combative stance throughout this standoff, they found a way to make that apology less than adequate.