Faren22

@Drakkenfyre Or worse than that, their incomprehensible Mega Man Volnutt / Sigma / Dr. Wily scribblings.

How is the Balance Board creepy? I would have said the Vitality Sensor.

@rartemass I think they were doing it intentionally... Doesn't make it any more bearable.

My shape? http://fashionometry.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/pear1.jpg

Sugar Cube looks intense! I guess it might be a bit confusing to look at at first, but I think it'll be easy enough to get the hang of it eventually...

@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.

Because games aren't fun if they're easy to control.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why there's a market for this kind of pad, but sometimes... I wish there wasn't.

@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."

That snide little condescending comment at the end was so infuriating. "Write your Congressman! Don't blame me. I couldn't possibly have turned a blind eye to this little enterprise that wasn't hurting us at all. I'm just doing my job." Some of the worst outcomes in the world have come from "just doing your job."

So, to get Kid Icarus, do I have to dismember a pigeon? Because I'm not certain that's a promotion I want to get in on.