October 18th, 2010

Brazil orders Rockstar to stop selling EFLC worldwide

Published at 2:03 PM PST

According to CVG, A Brazilian court has ordered Rockstar to stop selling Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City worldwide or face a $1,900 fine for each day it is sold. The reason? Rockstar doesn't seem to have the proper rights to use the song titled "Kid Conga feat. MC Miltinho" by Daniel Haaksman. While Rockstar does have signed documents by the author authorizing the use of the song, the song uses an unauthorized sample from the song "Bota o Dedinho pro Alto" by Hamilton Lourenço da Silva, which is interesting as he's the father of MC Miltinho. Even though this would technically fall in the Fair Use territory here in the States, Brazil seems to think differently and wants the game to be removed worldwide. They also want the digital versions pulled from digital distributors such as Steam. Since the ruling was just announced a few hours ago, it's unknown what Rockstar will do. The most obvious would be to disable the song from playing in the form of a patch for current copies and remove it all together for future copies. Although, Rockstar may choose to fight it. If you have a digital copy of Episodes from Liberty City, we would advise you to back up your copies in case of the worst.

Source: CVG