Eric Ruth's 8-bit DJ Hero remake removed thanks to Universal Music

@Fillem

If by "cool guy" you mean "intellectual and gameplay design theft coupled with sarcastic attitude to "the man" he stole from" then yeah, he's a pretty cool guy.

What I do love is this simple concept. Game company does it and they are rightfully bashed, destroyed, and mocked all BEFORE the legal damage starts... but let one guy do it as a hobby and suddenly the laws no longer apply because he was a cool guy. Of course it never occurs to people that these companies may also hire a myriad of other cool guys, it's just business that's evil.

@SheppyReturns
"If by "cool guy" you mean "intellectual and gameplay design theft coupled with sarcastic attitude to "the man" he stole from" then yeah, he's a pretty cool guy."

I don't think so I meant that at all.

@Mach2

as far as i know the only thing they might win in court is an argument over his use of "DJ Hero" in the title. if he changed that i would think he'd be fine (probably wasn't interested in defending himself in court though).

@Mach2 Soon it will be illegal to make Mario Paint songs.

@Faren22

You're absolutely right. It wasn't Eric who made several comments like calling it a "dick move" first at all. WTF is wrong with you people? This is how Zynga makes millions upon millions. They steal other companies designs, repackage, and laugh at the lawsuit settlements. This guy does the exact same thing yet it's forgivable?

And you forget how copyright works. They let this go by, suddenly it's on every bootleg console out there, diminishing the brand, and when the clear ripoff hits Xbox Live Indie channel, the defense is successfully using the "you didn't care then, why now?" excuse.

@SheppyReturns You really need to learn the difference between "freeware demakes" and "premium game ripoffs".

@Hank Hill

Hank Hill, you really need to learn the difference between theft and... theft? Seriously, whether for profit or for free, copyright law is copyright law. "I wasn't stealing this torrent of Tron Legacy because I put it out for free."

@SheppyReturns In case you didn't notice, he was making no money off of it, he wasn't claiming it was an original idea, and he was giving all credit to the song artists and the original producers of the game. If it was being sold on XBLIG this would be a whole other issue, but since he was distributing it for free and not taking credit for it, this wasn't hurting Universal/Activision in any way.
I understand that Universal has the power to pursue this, and I admit that it might fall into a gray area when it comes to how much copyrighted work was used. But "demaking" a game has happened at least once before, to Team Fortress 2, and not only was Valve tolerant enough to let it survive, they loved it and actually gave it a shout-out on their blog.
So that is what I mean when I'm talking about the snide little comment at the end: This man has the power to decide the fate of another person's work (regardless of how derivative it appears, work was put into this demake) and, after using that power and telling Ruth to take his work offline, he is completely unsympathetic. Taking into account the entire situation, with all the nuances, J. Grannis has indeed performed a "dick move."

@Faren22

Actually, Faren22, you're wrong. Did he own the rights to make a DJ Hero game? No, he did not. But he gave the game away for free. Did he own any of the music rights? No, but he gave the music away for free. If he does not own it, whether it's free or not is irrelevant. Saying "This was made by" and handing out burned copies of a NIN CD at a NIN Concert, is STILL copyright theft.

This is VERY basic stuff here. I'm not sure why you people can't understand it. And if it was done by anyone else with a corporation behind it, gamers would be crapping bricks of pure white hot rage. For example, look at the "Abbie" controversy at Ctrl-Alt-Del.

But on the other side of the coin, look at Girl Talk. His music is primarily the best mashups in the business. However, he OBTAINS the rights to use the music he sells. He contacts the rights holders, pays the money, and moves on.

As for this being for no purpose of profit, why would he send messages to blogs? Why would he run a blog? Do you REALLY think he's doing this for no gain whether for reputation or to bring more than just Fed-Ex ads to his site? Really? There is NO profit to be made from his creation of this, not even to use it as a resume piece to gain a coding job? Are you REALLY this oblivious that he created this purely out of love and wants neither credit nor attention from this?

@SheppyReturns
Actually, this may be considered parody, and therefore protected, which is also a very basic concept, and I don't know why you're not factoring it into your argument. Also, being generally condescending to the people you're arguing with doesn't lend any more credibility to your argument, and just makes people want to believe your points even less. But whatever.

Even if every argument you put forth is true, though, that still doesn't change the fact that Universal could easily have turned a blind eye to this, and it would not have hurt them. It would not have hurt them. I've played the demake. It's all right. By no means is it a comparable game to the actual DJ Hero. It's merely an interesting side note, not designed to draw business away from the original franchise, but rather to honor it. Piracy of video games poses a much larger threat than this guy, because by definition pirates are stealing the exact game of DJ Hero. That hurts business.

Just because something's in a legal gray area doesn't mean it has to be pursued. For example: Look at the hundreds of thousands of videos on Youtube. Look at all the amateur covers of Lady Gaga songs. Whoever is in charge of Lady Gaga's copyright protection obviously does not give a shit about these people doing these covers. Why? Well, because it isn't the official song being used, the people singing these amateur; terrible covers may be protected by certain nuances of copyright law; if they're pursued they may try to take it to court, which is messy, relatively expensive, time-consuming, and bad publicity; and finally because there are much bigger fish to fry.

Copyright law isn't even close to black and white, because the boundaries are always vague, especially when a situation like this occurs. My question is, is this guy even worth Universal's time?

Also, just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm oblivious. Please try to keep a more open mind.

@Faren22
I think you could make a case protecting him from action from Activision by hiding behind parody.

But it isn't the game that's in question more than neglect of licensing the music before distributing it.

Remember the early dance dance and karaoke revolution games where they had sound-a-likes doing the songs rather than the original artists? That's because licensing the music for purposes of "cover-banding" them is far cheaper than licensing the original recordings. This is clearly the case that the lawyer at Universal is making. And unfortunately for Mr. Ruth, he's probably going to lose the case. Especially given the tone of his response emails to Universal's counsel.

You don't call someone a dick who's got the legal upper hand, publish the correspondence on the internet, and not expect some sort of retaliation. If I were Mr. Ruth, I'd get a lawyer right away and start minimizing the damage.

@Faren22
Parody is also a very loose argument to make. In fact, in a majority of the cases in which Parody has been used as a defense, it has failed. This is why radio parodies often record new music to their "lyric change ups" and change significantly portions of the song to avoid lining up exactly. It's why Weird Al, on any given album, has to exclude ~10 songs for consideration because he could not secure the rights to the song he was making a parody of. It's also why Fair Use is a VERY tricky minefield. Maybe this'll help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

But most of all, when you have a very big lawyer saying, "maybe we can work something out as long as we can get a decent metric of how many have gone out so far," the last thing you tell him is it's an uncontrolled release and any actions against it would be a dick move, and then play the poor martyr.

That's the part that offends me the most. It was an uncreative, intellectually devoid exercise in blatant copyright theft with a "poor me" tag placed on the bottom when the copyright owners, rightfully, went after him. I don't mind demakes or fan projects turned legitimate. After all, Grand Theft Auto NES eventually took it's own path and became Retro City Rampage. And when these projects start, it's usually under the condition that, "yes, chances are the company WILL put a clamp on this."

Hell, long ago, I mentioned on a blog website that I was currently working on a Donkey Kong 2.5D remake and got my own Cease & Desist. I sucked it up and worked on some other projects. I didn't call Nintendo a bunch of greedy jerks, say "well, Sega didn't mind when I did Columns as a class project," and place all the info out and play the victim. I didn't own Donkey Kong, Nintendo did. Thus THEY had the right to tell me to stop. And this is really what the issue is about.

@Sandite5
Except that's quite possibly the worst way to "support" Mr. Ruth. The game itself isn't in question. It's the neglect to license the music used in it properly. There's a licensing program for the type of "de/re-make" he did.

Eric really needs to go on record stating that he doesn't want this distributed anywhere and get a good lawyer. He was the originator of the distribution, and the lawyer will certainly make that case if it's pursued further.

In comparison, virus authors are persecuted based on the widespread damage their virus causes. Given how overused the term "going viral" is. It wouldn't be hard for a lawyer to blur the definition enough to convince an average jury to treat Mr. Ruth the same as a virus author.

Mr. Ruth's unprofessional demeanor and admission of guilt in the emails could be taken as an act of provocation. And doesn't seem like a very bright response against someone who clearly has no issue with making a "dick move".

Do a google search on "Jammie Thomas-Rasset kazaa". If a jury will find a woman guilty to the sum of $1.92 million for trading 24 songs, what do you suppose is in store for Eric Ruth?

Every download of that game containing those songs just compounds the damages. And even if Eric can't produce the numbers, it doesn't mean they can't come up with them some other way. They can get a court order to get those numbers from a mirror, for example. One mirror's numbers might be devastating enough, and Universal can come out looking like the good guy: "We *could* have gone to all the other distribution sites to calculate further damages, but we're willing to settle for this number"

Food for thought... If you want to see more de-makes from this guy, you probably shouldn't download his game while it still contains copyrighted material.

Did you read the letter? He asked him to send a copy of the game, and see if they could work something out.

The guy's response was "I broke copyright before, and didn't get in trouble. I shouldn't get in trouble now."

Had the guy not been an idiot and smartass to him, he might have gotten something worked out.

@Drakkenfyre
...He asked for download metrics that they could review to come to an "agreement," aka "so we can tell you how much we're charging you."

"We will review the data and see if there is some way to come to a mutual agreement for use of music in this game."

I guess in conjunction with the previous line, it did mean that.

@Rocketboy
inorite?

@Rocketboy the article 'stiq linked to has a pre-made google search for it, I found it that way. (I feel bad for forgetting this was out until now, but I checked it out its pretty awesome.... do wish he'd been able to make a sequel with more tracks, though.)