Karaoke Forums

Ascaps Bull & Bear suit and SC and Stellars Phoenix attempt have to the biggest PR booboo of the decade.

The market is ultimately going to be determined by the millions of singers. If they did bust or sue a KJ it would cause a domino effect that would severely hurt the public karaoke business The publicity would totally destroy the instigator.

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

It is NOT my opinion... it's the LAW.

It may be an UNCHALLENGED law, but that doesn't make it an opinion.

The copyright act and the fair use act specifically prohibit commercial entities from using a format other than what is purchased...

And I HIGHLY doubt (this is my opinion) that MTU and others that are making the claims they are will be my legal defense if and when the karaoke cops come a callin'!

I'm not saying I don't agree with you in principle, but let's not confuse a want vs what the reality really is.

Thoughts from a developer of a karaoke rotation plugin for Winamp, who has been in touch with every corner of the karaoke world from developers to manufacturers to lawmakers:

- My cousin sits on the city council of san jose. I told him about how piracy is affecting us (80% and rising in here)

7b has been in business since 1980, starting with Japanese karaoke on cassette with printed lyrics, all the way up to modern PC systems. They were one of only 3-4 karaoke venues in San Jose up until about 2001-02.

American Idol popularized karaoke and new venues started popping up everywhere running pirated gigs.

Back to my cousin though.

I told him what's going on, and said "If this was used cars instead of karaoke, and someone started selling stolen cars, SJPD would be on it in a heartbeat, how is this fair, the city is going to let the 7b owner suffer like this when he pays his business tax?" He tried to get our police, FBI and the state attorney general to pay attention to what was going on, but they wanted no part in it. Add Kapa, as well as directly posting/messaging SC themselves (and posts were deleted)

All those agencies basically said the same thing, "How can we prove it?" or "There's so many loopholes and grey area's."

At some point I think law enforcement will have a clear picture of what's going on... But when legit KJ's, IP lawyers, and karaoke mfgr's all disagree, law enforcement has nothing to fall back on.

It's kind of screwed. -

More discussion on PC based systems here:

http://www.autokdj.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=199

No they do not.  Should you find the exact words you are using in the act, feel free to quote them.



You are interpreting the law to say what you do. When you can quote a section of the law and show how it talks about not using entities in a format other than that in which they are distributed, go right ahead. But I don't believe you can.

WOW!!  I'm sorry everyone.... I think I opened a can of worms with that question.   Didn't know it was such a complicated topic !!

it's probably THE most debated topic. And with good reason.

The two karaoke manus really tick-ed off a lot of folks that have been loyal buyers of their cdgs with their public stance on this. There are the staunch advocates that if you don't play the original cdgs, you're just as guilty as those that download and don't buy them (i.e. illegal downloaders, ebay hard drive buyers, etc.). And then there are those like myself that say there's a no-harm, no foul violation of the copyright act.

Mickey, I'll try to find the exact verbage... as we all know, the lettering of the two acts are very confusing. A simple search didn't yield the part that convinced me. I'll have to spend some more time looking.

Oh, it can be pretty convincing. When you look at the four factors for fair use, commercial format-shifting just about pegs the meter on all four. So it would be a very reasonable and convincing interpretation to say "it is law".

But it is still an interpretation, as there is no hard-and-fast automatic test, i.e. "if you do this you are in violation". All fair use is determined by case law. And it has simply not yet been sufficiently tested.