Karaoke Forums

I'M NOT SAYING THAT THEY PROMOTE IT but they sure don't spend as much effort trying to stamp it out. There are a lot more pirate KJ's than people selling hard drives to them. Sound Choice can't be charged with entrapment if someone else is selling the loaded hard drives to the pirates...but they can take the hard drive seller to court to get the list of their customers and then go after those customers with proof that they purchased a loaded hard drive which makes it more likely that they will pay the Sound Choice Piper.

This is nearly funny. Don't read if sober.

If SC sell the loaded hard drives themselves.
They already know who bought them.
Have cut out the middle man.
Don't need to pay PI's.
They can fake their own moon landings.
Reclaim their loaded drives.
File suit and sell them on again.

You missed the bit that said Don't read if sober.

This is not a revenue model for SC. Trust me on this. I know the company well.

If anything, Kurt would like things to go back to the way they were in 98-2001. 70 employees, bulk of whom were studio musicians. Studios in separate buildings but on the same campus. CDG's selling for $40-60 @ pop and NO PIRACY.

Right now he's got a skeletal crew of less than 10 people. As you say there is a ton of piracy going on, but every time he hears of, or sees a new case that's just another little chip away at the mans heart. I don't think he'll have enough heart to make it through every single case out there.

Sound Choice is not happy busting pirates. I know it makes them sad to do it. They are musicians, they'd rather be in a studio jamming out. Let me put this to you another way..

If every marriage was perfect, we wouldn't need family lawyers. Every family lawyer I talk to wants out of the business, because seeing families get torn apart is so sad for them. I see Kurt and the rest of SC in a similar role, he's watching an industry he helped create get destroyed. It's got to hurt a bit.

Certainly he's had his fair share of foot in mouth, but I'm not going to hang the man out to dry over that. Lord knows I've said plenty of wrong things over the years.

You know what, after this, I think I'm going into farming.

Actually no one here really knows what SC or any other manufacture is doing, until such time as they make it public. Bruce you don't know if SC is or isn't going after harddrives and if they are why would they go public early in the game or where? No more than the police or FBI are going to tell you about any of their undercover operations. Just because you don't see what you think you should be seeing doesn't mean there's nothing going on behind the scenes.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

I did say don't read if sober.

I know SC is in process of taking down the notorious DanStern.

ololol

i agree 100%. i was not trying to say that anyone BUYING the drives was legit, but legit hosts getting caught in the tuna net. like the disk based guy sent a letter of intent for the cavs unit he didn't even use. just collateral damage, HE is the legit type of host getting caught up in the mess i was referring to. 100k songs for $400....remember your parents? "if it sounds too good to be true....."

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

Charlie Daniels said it best......."get a tall tree and a short piece of rope"

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

It is the lame old "if you have nothing to hide, it shouldnt bother you." line that the sheep repeat over and over. Well I hope they get cavity searched at the airport when leaving on their next vacation, "since they have nothing to hide..."

I am not up in arms... But I would be pissed if I got an intent to file a LAWSUIT from SONY asking me to show them all my PCs, And discs to prove that I have not pirated any PS3 games.

Apple did not fight piracy buy suing(or sending intent to sue letters) to PAYING CUSTOMERS, they simply made the LEGAL process cheap and easy.

Except in the view of the SONGWRITERs there was plenty of piracy by SC itself, not by the KJs back 10 years ago. Look at how many SC disks are out of print from that period. THe main reason being many were not (ever) licensed. Out of 924 spotlight disks only 224 are still in print.

How much effort would it be for SC to print up new copies of all that extensive song library if they had the legal licenses from the songwriters to do it? If they had licenses to do so, even a LOW volume sale out of print disks would be mostly profit for SC because they have already invested the cost of making the master copy.

As a result of SC's past piracy in terms of SONWRITER licenses they had to fire their musicians and hire big legal teams. Now their busines model is much more legal than music, how long ago did they last make a CD?? Or even re-negotiate licenses to re-issue some of the many out of print CDs that are in huge demand and hard to find.

SC has even stopped making nearly all of the spotlight select series where they re-issued some of the songs from disks with a few illegal songs but some legal ones.

My biggest problem is that Kurt's company could not survive the level of legal scrutiny (by songwriters) that they are now applying to KJs. Yes most of the early Karaoke companies were also not doing their licenses to songwriters, but SC is one of the few that has survived this long.

Uhm, not exactly.

What happened was karaoke licensing used to be simple and cheap. Then it became costly because of the "Sync" license, which as of and of itself created a whole new set of licensing headaches for the karaoke producers.

Karaoke manu's up until that point had built up HUGE libraries, and still conducted licensing as usual. Some of them didn't know that there was a requirement. Then some record execs realized the potential for additional Sync licnesing, and started suing the manu's into oblivion not *just* for their current titles, but old titles the labels owned rights on.

Even Disney got into the mad grab. Disney really made headlines by suing for a song from Pinocchio made to karaoke version.

I probably left out a lot of details. That plus piracy killed them, blah blah blah. I've met these guys, and guys like them. They've never set out to do anything wrong except jam, record it, and make money from it.

Jeesh, the way folks crucifix the karaoke companies is amazing. Like they actually set out to fail.

The synch rights laws existed.

They applied to any visual media combined (in time) with music. That includes anything like movies, commercials, TV, ADs AND karaoke.

http://musicians.about.com/od/qz/g/synclicensing.htm

I couldnt easily find when the Synch rights laws first existed but they appear to date to well before the 1980s at the very least.

It may have taken some time for the music industry to assert their rights with regards to Karaoke, but song piracy got pretty big before anyone took notice with it in a legal sense as well (even though it has allways been illegal).

The karaoke companies just chose to ignore the Synch rights laws. This is nothing but a Napster defense. Of course Napster had to change their business when someone pointed out that they were stealing under EXISTING laws, the Karaoke defense is no different.


Such a defense can be made for many KJ pirates as well. But ignorance of the law is not a defense.

So by your logic, 2 wrongs make a right? Is that what you're saying? It's OK for people to pirate karaoke music, because SC and a few others made some mistakes in regards to licensing 10 years ago?

And just to clarify..

Yes Sync existed, but nobody thought it was needed for karaoke music. It's whole intent was for music>movies. This "discovery" that it could be used on CDG didn't happen till 1996 with the ABKODISNEY VS Stellar

http://openjurist.org/96/f3d/60/abkco-m ... ecords-inc

10 YEARS AGO?

They still tippy toe around US law when it comes to the intellectual rights of the artists/songwriters/copyright holders. If the EAGLES or others wanted their material on the Gem series, SC wouldn't have to use overseas laws for a product made, marketed, and sold here in the US.

I cant feel sorry for a victim that, that victimizes others...They might be "legal" but they aint clean IMO.



Thanks for the link, so the discovery was in 1996.

So it was decided in court in 96 before SC's heyday in 1998-2001..... And very few disks from that period around 1998-2001 are still in print (long after sync rights were decided in court). Regardless there are a lot of assertations by SC (regarding format shifting) that have valid legal arguments on both sides that have NOT been decided in court yet, but that does not prevent SC and others treat some of these issues as settled law, when they are little more than one opinion.

No I am not saying two wrongs make a right, I just am not comfortable with turning a significant former wrongdoer into the policeman who enforces the law, or the final word about what is legal and illegal. This is even worse when all too many KJ treat SC's legal opinion as gospel even when they change that opinion when it suits SC This is demonstrated by the GEM series. In this series they create a product that is intended to be used in a way that they asserted mere months before to be illegal.

Kurt is a member here on karaoke forums, but he's also a member here so he must be respected like any other member. You and fred are openly libeling the man. So far I've heard.

1. from fred. He's created his own backpay channel by creating the pirated hard drive market and moving in with "legit" karaoke after the pirate has been busted.

2. from you. He willfully commits copyright law violations in the name of profit.

Do you get what I'm saying Man? You guys need to tone it down a bit. I like the fact that Kurt is willing to come here and chat with us.

To each his own, I feel that many of Kurts comments over time have been libelous to many in the KJ community that strive to be legal honest hosts.

It is a FACT that I have hundreds of statements (included with every SC disk in recent years) on SC disks that declare copying a disk to a hard drive is illegal. But when SC decides to come out with the GEM series suddenly it is legal. The law did not change.

Kurt has explained over and over again that they can't tell you the Gem series/1:1 is legal under all laws. He only says that SC won't ask for damages if you can prove you are 1:1. He does not gaurantee that no one else will come after you. I don't know if it is hypocrisy so much as trying to exist in a world where the technology has outrun the existing laws.