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Not to pee on your parade, but this copyright (infringement) business has been going on for years. I'm an old man of 70 and even back in my youth, my teens, 1950's, long before karaoke or even cassette tapes, vinyl's is all there was, came to be. In our teens (14 on) a few of us would get together and pick and strum dad's guitars singing our favorite R&R and country songs we learned by listening to our 45's and LP albums. Some of our dads had their own bands and they would warn us about copyright even back then. They would change one word in the song to protect themselves from copyright infringement. even taping their music on reel to reel recording tapes, back in the 50's and 60's.
Now too I've taken notice since I've only been even singing karaoke for the past 5 years, something that some of these karaoke company's are trying to get by the law, I'm old school in that I'd rather sing with a live band. It was difficult and nearly impossible for me to sing to lyrics on a screen even when I tried it. But it threw me off and of course out of time is when I saw different words in the song that the recording artist didn't change but the karaoke producing company did. I hated karaoke, but I learned and love it today. But I found out that I don't have to look at the screen if I know the music and the words and the key and Que notes of when to sing. But what I have noticed is sometimes the words are wrong and not what the recording artist produced or the way he or she sang the song like I said. So in my mind these karaoke company's that change a few words are actually infringing the copyright law or thinking like in the old days that changing the words changes the song and they are not infringing, but they are since 1979, you can't do that. I sometimes think that is what brought Chartbuster to it's knee's with the help of course of another karaoke venue who wanted the whole market in the US to themselves.
I too would like all the pirates with their 40,000 song libraries of pirated hard drives put out of business, with so many out there an impossible task I believe. But these bigger Karaoke KJ's go full time, if they live near a big city and hire KJ's to spread out, they advertise in phone books, on the web and get well known, then the "karaoke police" and see Sound Choice on the screen and well we know where it goes from there, don't we. I want to stress that I too am all for cleaning up the karaoke industry of pirates, with my less than 4,000 songs that I have I do have all the disc's and receipts from downloaded music from legitimate venues, but like you or that article says "not for public display, for home use only", but even I overlook that little fine print just like everyone else even those on this site. I paid my dues with the disc's that I bought, but nothing like some of you have, but again I only been doing karaoke for about 5 years now. Just like the drug and gun war legislation this is headed the same direction, apples and oranges, black market until they get caught. Shelpt and Sound Choice don't have enough "karaoke police" to clean up the entire market no matter what Congress or federal laws that pass are to protect the recording artist as well as the artist who wrote the lyrics or the bands who play the music. All those folks who wrote the song to producing and pay for copyright for the song still get "screwed". Too many middle men before they see a few pennies got their hand in the till first, including their own lawyers. It's like getting a phone call for a donation drive and you donate $10, the person or organization who the fund raiser is for is lucky to get 10cents on the dollar, and that is about what they get, the biggest piece of the pie goes to the "middlemen". Yea they can sell all the license's to the host but the venue Karaoke Jockey may be the pirate and "say" he has the disc's for "all" his songs but what bar owner is going to check each one of 3,000 songs let alone a library of 40,000 before he hires a KJ, not likely gonna happen.
I never realized how much of a pirate I am until New Years this past year when I got accused of downloading 6 songs, which I did not download, even my ISP cut my service till I called them and told them that was impossible and could check my hard drive, songs I would never download and I live alone. I got reinstated, it was a tragic even going on in my life at that exact time when music was #99 out of 100 important things to do, my nephew took his own life at 28 years old on Christmas, so music of any kind was the furthest thing going on in my life, they let me off the hook.
But what I found out was doing research on all this pirate stuff made me realize in spite of those 6 songs I was guilty of so much other copyright infringement I should be put in prison the rest of my life. As I said I am an old man of 70, I still play in bands (infringing, because we don't have a license to sing recording artist songs, but we still do) but playing in bands I sometimes forget the words to older songs that may get requested. I have a cheat song book I take with me with at least 250 songs with Titles, words and even the chords that I stole off one or many web pages, downloaded, copied, and printed and put in my song book, that offer such for free, they are not free, they are pirated I come to find out and that makes me no better than the guy who buys that hard drive without the disc's. If you're listening to you WiFi walking down the sidewalk and singing the song out loud while walking in public, you too are infringing on copyrighted material and could be arrested and fined, that's how the law is written, scary stuff when you research what the music industry has on it's law books, believe that. And saying "I didn't know that" don't hold up in court. Even Hallmark Cards will be getting on this band wagon with their musical cards being offered free or a small fee on the web by pirates who have downloaded these to their hard drives, it's coming............some day!
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, one more thing, I wonder if the "Karaoke Police" who are paid to find these KJ pirates and the host's that get caught without "all the license's required" for playing their radio's or bands, juke boxes, or KJ's they go to court and fined possibly $100,000 of thousands of dollars, do the recording artist or the song writer ever see a dime of that money or is it all pocketed........... elsewhere.................