Karaoke Forums

Hi- someone I work with recently purchased one of these hard drives with thousands of songs on it. He's just using it for personal use - not commercial. I was considering buying one for daughter but figured I should do some research first. The user he bought it from has been selling these on eBay for over 2 years and claims in big bold print in their descriptions that everything is legal and on the up and up. They even go as far as saying that the drives could be used for shows, etc.

Then I came here and see everyone posting about these types of sellers and that they are illegal, and buyers potentially liable. What's the story here? If it's illegal, how can this seller be on eBay for over 2 years with hundreds of glowing reviews?

Is my co-worker now liable for some group to come after him, or susceptible to some kind of scam by the seller?

Just trying to do some research and get info on this. Don't want to break any laws.

Thanks!

Are the songs legal? NO!
Will your buddy have the FBI bust in his door? No.
Why would your buddy buy two?
He already broke the law once.
Public performance rights are handled by third parties, not copyright holders or drive sellers.
The drive seller is not authorized to permit public performance.

Thanks for approving my account. It's not my friend that wants to buy two. He bought one and I was considering getting one after he told me about it. If it's illegal how can he have a successful eBay business for years? I imagine eBay is strict about illegal products being sold on their platform.

If these hard drives are illegal, what's the best way for a home user to aquire songs legally? My daughter is 9 and wanted a karaoke machine for her birthday. We got her one from Costco and it was terrible and had almost no music. I wanted to find more music for her. My coworker was in the exact same situation so we started looking on ebay for cds and found these hard drives being sold.

Is he at risk of being sued now just for buying it? How common is this to happen? I imagine tons of people are in exactly our same situation and just want to buy songs for our kids to sing at home.

Anyway I won't be buying it because I don't want to take any risks of some sort of legal action in the future. Just trying to do some more research first so I understand the laws around all this.

I read through some older threads here and didnt even realize there was a whole karaoke world out there with pirates and all.

Thanks
H

Why, simply because they cant shut them all down.

You can use a Karafun subscription for home use, like 10 a month. Gives you access to 30k + tracks.

Or youtube is another option for home use.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

If you want legal songs in bulk, you could pay for the home subscription of KaraFun and either use their free player or just use a Chromebook and access the web based player.

_________________
The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.