Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the Courtroom

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

Hero rocks outThe Romantics, well-loved by karaoke masters everywhere for creating the classic song “That’s What I Like About You,” are suing Activision over the version of their hit in Guitar Hero Rocks the 80s. Apparently the cover in the game, marked “as made famous by the Romantics,” is so good that they’re afraid fans won’t be able to tell it from the original. YesSlightly paranoid. In any case, they’re suing the makers of the game, saying they didn’t have permission to make a “sound-alike” version of the song. Well, guys, it seems that copyright law says that you only need permission if you cover a song and it sounds too different. Precedent doesn’t seem to be on either side, so we’ll just have to see how this turns out. You can bet it will translate into sales for Guitar Hero, though – “So good, it’s against the LAW!”

Romantics Sue Over Guitar Hero
[madisonian.net, more at joegratz.net]

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