Karaoke Forums

I would think Sound Choice would not want to appear as David and Goliath but corp.s for the most part in the music business DO! Making an example out of a few means putting the fear of the law in the rest is their reasoning and is true. It can ruin your life not to mention your families lifes.

The reason most just settle is it's cheaper in the long and short but it will not achieve the scare factor the plaitiff is looking for. This can only be done by a large court award and a ruined life. As time goes on the corp.s correctly realize that it is just to expensive to seek and destroy on a small time settlement basis. Direct TV started sueing thousands for signal theft each month when they got to this point and it worked. I realize this has nothing to do with signal theft but music misuse or theft is quite similar and prosecuted with the same laws.

Those with CDs to backup their tracks will not fall into this boat because of the format change grey-area which neither side wants decided. Music rights holders don't want to bring this up for fear they may not win in court and those doing the format changes don't want to pay the legal fees needed to establish the lacking legal precedence.

Good Question, Steven. Since Sound Choice can't file a suit over the music files, they have decided to file law suits for using their Logo in digital format. Part of filing such a law suit is showing what damages have been incurred by the plaintiff. If I make a digital file of the Sound Choice logo, print multiple copies of it and plaster it all over the venue where I'm doing a show. How am I causing Sound Choice to lose money? If anything, I'm helping to advertise their product and in the process, making money for them. How is showing the same logo on a televison screen any different? The reason Sound Choice puts their logo on their karaoke tracks is to advertise who made the tracks every time they are played. Now they want to harrass their customers for showing the logo when playing their tracks from a computer. What they are telling their customers is that they are ALL GUILTY until proven innocent. The last time I checked, it was supposed to be the other way around. Showing their logo doesn't cost Sound Choice a penny. People would be perfectly happy buying the same tracks without any logos which means that the logos have no monetary value to the person playing the track. The value is in the music and the cdg file, which of course Sound Choice has no rights to file a law suit over. I still feel that owning just one Sound Choice disc gives you the right to display the Sound Choice logo at any time during your show. It is nothing but advertising and Sound Choice is benefitting from it; not losing money because of it.

The LOGO is just a picture. It is not music and it is not lyrics that are being sung by anyone. It is nothing more than a piece of clip-art.

Workmen, here we can agree that those with the cd's don't have anything to fear. The cheapest route is to go through the audit or settle if you don't have the cd's as it costs next to nothing to go through the audit. You may only be out the time to organize your discs so that their discs can be easily accessed and doing the audit via Skype.

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

Although Sound Choice does not own the rights to the words and music they did license it from the owners, in some cases recorded the music and mastered the cdg file. The logo is a registered trademark displayed only to make others aware of their intellectual property rights.

Ownership of that CDG file is theirs and copyright law applies to it!

I've said that before. Beethoven's Fifth Symphany is public domain and anyone can use it. However, if the London Philharmonic or any other person makes a recording of it, that recording is protected. If a director of a film wants to use that rendition, then they have to pay for it. Another example would be a Disney version of a Brothers Grimms tale such as Rapunsel or Cinderella. Though those stories are in the public domain, one cannot use the Disney version without permission, exemption from the Copyright Act notwithstanding. Use Disney's version without permission and see how fast they will act.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Sound Choice may state "all rights reserved" but that is not how laws work Sound choice does not have all the "rights" to dole out as they see fit. Sound Choice must work under the legal system and can not write copyright law to suit themselves. Unfortunately they seem to act as if they are writing the laws themselves, and that is always dangerous. We don't necessaraly have to do what sound choice is telling us, when Sound Choice's declarations do not conform to a previous legal decison. Laws are generally written to balance competing interests not only side with one interest.

Copyright law is intended to be a balance between a product that can be used in a reasonable way, and respecting the creators of the material that is covered by a copyright. Yes karaoke is copyright material, but it is only sound choice licensing the copyright of the original artist.

The silly thing is that it appears that Sound Choice has vioated copyright laws in the past such as when they made the Eagles disks (and many others). If the copyright holders for those songs could sue for as much as they wished and owned all of the rights, the way Sound Choice seems to imply SC can, then the copyright holders (artists) would have sued SC to bankrupcy and beyond long ago. If the copyright holders could get "not less than" $750 per song copy for unliscenced song copy that SC sold, then SC would be totally broke. It makes the 8125 look cheap, because SC would have had to pay $11,250 in fines for each copy they sold of that disk.

A second silly thing is that if Sound Choice actually won a case that found format shifting in fact illegal, it would seriously hurt the sales of Sound Choice if they actually enforced such a law if other companies did not enforce it. I am not saying that format shifting is illegal only that it would really hurt the sales of any company that found it illegal, and enforced that finding. It appears to me (and I may be wrong) that the majority of karaoke shows run off a hard drive, and the few disk based that I know of shows are either shifting or plan to do so soon. Why would sound choice position themselves so that they would not sell their product to the majority of the KJ market??

I always thought this was about the pirating of the trademark and not the copyright issues. Everyone seems to be concerned about those who have the disc being sued and from what I have seen this just isn't happening. Those who have the disc are going through an audit and it is over. Again I don't have the level of legal expertise that some of you have but looking at the laws and how they are being applied it appears to me that Sound Choice is well within their rights. Those that have the disc and can show it seem to have no problem, those that don't seem to be settling rather quickly and I can't really believe they are doing so without the advise of an attorney. So if 98% of those filed against are settling on the advise of an attorney isn't that also saying that 98% of attorney's are agreeing that Sound Choice does have those rights or at least to say that the fight is not worth it to proceed into court. I know that there are some attorney's out here who would want to take these issues to the court if there was any chance of winning and there are some who would want to take it to court regardless of the chances of winning just to make some money, what I don't see is any attorney's jumping at the chance to do so by offering their services pro bono.

Which is the part people are failing (or refusing) to see. They do own the rights to their version of the recording.

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

What people are refusing to see is that SC is convinced that nearly all KJs are guilty and they must pay. People are settling or agreeing to audits because they realize that if they do not their legal costs will be high even if they are innocent of any song piracy.

Sound choice is using their legal team to force people to buy thier product, knowing that their product costs less than the likely cost of getting a decent lawyer.

There are lots of things a business can do that are within their legal rights, but just because something is legally allowed does not make it good business sense.

, OK!

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

Uh Yes!

And for everyone they catch 3 more disappear from the business I can't see that as a bad thing. A year ago you could walk into 10 shows anywhere in Virginia and 9 of them would have exactly the same 100,000+ song library, today you can walk into 10 shows and less than half have the same library.

That pretty much convinced me that Sound Choice was correct when they said that 90% of the KJs out here were pirates!

Since SC has proven that they aren't targeting KJs who are in fact 1:1 that only leaves the ones who are profiting from the product they aren't paying for, so if they are settling or leaving the business, I say great!

Yes it cost more to fight in court than it does to settle, that is the purpose of settling. However, if you are legal to begin with there is no reason to pay either.

Yes, forcing people to buy what they have stolen is so so bad.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

How do I find this docket? Or should I have looked thru earlier posts?

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

http://www.soundchoicestore.com/gem-faq ... 64.html#a7

#7

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

I disagree Danny. This is from #7 of my earlier link. Straight from the mouths of Sound Choice.

"However, the KIAA Member karaoke producers (of which Sound Choice is a founding member) have come out in agreement that we will NOT continue to pursue a lawsuit against someone if they have merely shifted the content from an original legal product and can prove they owned that product prior to any investigation and continue to own it. "

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

YOU NEED WRITTEN PERMISSION TO PLAY A FORMAT SHIFTED HARD DRIVE IN A COMMERCIAL ENVIRONMENT PERIOD.


Piggy backing off my last comment, you are not in violation while operating digitally as a KH just because you haven't been audited/and or you haven't received written permission to operate in such a manner. You have NOTHING to fear as long as you are operating in a 1:1 manner per the #7 I quoted.

Danny I know you said you went thru an audit, why did it cost you $300 and why did you buy the GEM series if you were operating 1:1? Was the GEM library a library that you were missing a majority of the songs? Or at least from a quality manu or version?

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KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

The only way for them to insure that the owner of said format shift is 1:1 is to do an audit. One of the caveats of said audit is the written permission. I can assure you that both SC and CB intend to pursue these audits and will not agree to format shifting if they refuse to do the audit after being discovered to be running a computer show.
They are not going to just take your word for it. Nor should they.

I can see it now. Joe schmo is running a computer show. A SC investigator visits the show. "do you have all your discs?" the investigator asks.
"Of course I do but they are locked up at home." Joe replies.
"when is a good time to check them out?" Investigator asks.
"Gee I am quite busy at the moment, can't you just take my word for it?"
"Sure" investigator says.

NOT GONNA happen that way. The last thing the investigator is gonna do is contact SC and tell them how uncooperative Joe was and to pursue legal action against him.

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

I spent $300 for the bus ticket, meals and room. The Audits themselves didn't really cost me anything. I could have done them by Skype but since I wanted to meet everyone that showed up, I chose to go down on my first trip in nine years.

The GEM series was because I wanted more songs and better quality ones too, I had purchased ten of the SUperCDG's but three of them were not up to my standards which dropped me 3,234 songs when I pulled them out of my system. I did not have to buy it (or lease it as some would say) but I felt it was the best bang for the buck.

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

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/virgin ... 52/255654/

Interesting factoid: The suits against Rob & Dee Crosby, Nigel Gandara, Jimmy O'Neal, Nick Fisher, and Rick Nunnaly were all dropped from the original suit by Sound Choice, then refiled on this latest docket in July. No reason why was given to the defendants.

Going by past practice of Virginia's "rocket docket" trial would have probably started in late August or early September. Now it's gonna be around April/May of 2011.

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Dave's not here.

Nigel got by the first suit because they didn't have his correct info before filing the first suit. In between he bought up all the SC discs he could find to try and pass an audit. They got his info from a dealer that knew he was named and turned his mailing info and name into SC.

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