Karaoke Forums

Here is a jump to Kurt Slep's 4th post on ODJT board.

http://www.ourdjtalk.com/showthread.php ... post324536

I think this could be resolved a lot easier and quicker if the venue was held accountable for ensuring the entertainment is legal.

If their entertainment license was at stake...
Would they risk it.?

I don't go along with that, Jerry (great name, by the way). Venues are already responsible for ASCAP/BMI licensing, and any local permits and licenses for amplified music, entertainment and zoning.
How could the venues possibly be made responsible for checking on trademark infringement? (If somehow that got approved, I could see venues universally dropping karaoke immediately as simply not being worth the trouble.)
The onus has to be placed on manufacturer, as the trademark owner, to go after parties they believe have stolen their rightful properties.

Apparently several venues as well as KJs are named in the recent lawsuits in Ten, and South Carolina.

I don't know how they were dividing up the liabality though.

CAVS systmes that are being sold now do not contain Sound Choice. So they appeared to close that loophole a while ago.

Muliti riggers, are sometimes legal, and the fact that they Multi-rig probably is not a great indicator of the KJ being illegal.

Multi riggers are more difficult to prove they are illegal if they have one set of legal songs. It must be demonstrated that they were used simultaneously, requireing multiple investigatiors.

Tips from KJs are heresay (and that is not legal evidence).

What SC's plans appears to be is to have a team check out the KJs in one area at a time, and make an assesment on the legality of the KJs. They will send their investigators to look at all of the KJs in one city, and then move on to the next.
Also for the trials they can bundle several lawsuits from the same city together and therefore cut their costs that way, by only having one court date and legal team for several lawsuits.

If they relied on tips, they would spend all of their investigation budget flying thier researchers from one city to the next.

As for me I still think that the chance of a KJ being illegal is the number of songs advertized. If someone has 100k legal songs they are a very rare exception and 99.9% of the KJs that claim that many are illegal.

I think that the only way forward for the ENTIRE music industry is to embrace Downloading ,albeit legally,by making all the music available,and developing some kind of protection on the downloads,ie one copy only.
Also,whats wrong with Soundchoice,or any other manu for that matter,selling pre loaded hard drives ,licensed,and with all their songs on?. I'm sure people would want them.

Oh? He didn't die, you mean the three-legged one eyed dog with no ears? He got a big contract in Hollywood doing a political talk show on Animal Planet and married a supermodel from Brazil.

(My wife says I have too much time on my hands)

_________________
No venue to big or too small. From your den to the local club or event, we have the music most requested. Great sounding system!

Dave quite frankly I doubt many hosts could afford a legimate harddrive containing say 10,000 songs at a bargain price of $10,000 in one shot.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

Why this easy solution cant work with US laws is that when Karaoke is made a contract is signed for a set number of copies of the song between the Karaoke company and the songwriter.

I suspect a substantial portion of the cost involved in legal karaoke is the negotiation of such contracts.

Of course the karaoke companies (or the songwriters) are not willing to pay for or sell unlimited numbers of rights.

CDs work a lot easier than downloads because the company can say "we are printing 5000 cds with your song on it" and write a single check to the songwriters and a one time contract.

With downloads it is a lot more difficult, how much of a pain do you think Sound Choice would have if they had to write 5000 or more checks each month to songwriters depending on how many songs were sold by each artist. Many if most of those montly checks might only be worth pennies.

UK has the advantage that companies there only have to pay a single entity that distributes the earnings like BMI/ASCAP does here.

For all of the annoyance we have as KJs with BMI/ASCAP imagine if the bar had to track down each songwriter and negotiate a contract for every song played in the venue separately. It would totaly kill public music.

Kurt has posted yet again on ODJT....

This time he responds to "DOWNLOADS" & "OFF SHORE" issues...

It's worth a read for all that have serious questions about these topics...

http://www.ourdjtalk.com/showthread.php ... post324701

He states in the above link that there is no issue in converting legally bought discs to computer format. In the UK we have to have a license to do that. Its called a ProDub Licence. The Manu's dont see that money tho...its just another "tax"

Dr. Fred;

That would be true in a perfect world....

however it ain't perfect....

far from it and MUCH farther than you know.

InsaneKJ:

All smoke & mirrors....

"for those with serious questions"... these aren't the answers.

RBTL....

That's funny. In another of his posts he states unequivocally that SC does not have the rights to convert to digital! The funny part is, they apparently don't care, because they have converted those files to digital to facilitate downloading- again, admittedly without having the rights to do so.

Here's some more fun stuff:


FROM SC: "I can tell you this much: the rights on the downloads are WORLDWIDE – that is, the songs can be purchased from anywhere and downloaded to anywhere legally, without boundary or border restrictions. (Some sites in foreign countries are not legally supposed to be downloaded outside the territory where the site is located or licensed.) The BAD NEWS?? The publishers did not specifically grant permission for use in a commercial application. IN OTHER WORDS, you cannot use the download files in your show "

MY THOUGHTS: Please note two things here: 1) He states that the rights on dowloads are worldwide. Really? Under what WORLDWIDE authorized umbrella organization? Sorry, no "rights" here, just worldwide access.

2) Under his own admission ( FINALLY), you cannot use these downloaded files in your show


Is there now ANY QUESTION regarding the legal use of downloads to host karaoke? Rip from your discs only.....

_________________
"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe,

What is your legal background or do you have a lawyer advising you?

I just want to know so I can judge the credibility of any of your statements here on KS or ODJT.

It is obvious that SC has lawyers so I would take creedence on what Kurt is saying based on the fact that he has legal counsel.

Thank you.

Funny despite several emails to the produb crew, they are yet to reply on the use of soundchoice discs and several others licensed in the USA within the uk. In fact I can't get a single reply as to if the license covers me at all for karaoke. especially considering I have permission from most manu's to copy the discs on a 1:1 basis.

InsaneKJ ... do you help the 'POOP' with their legal affairs?

Please re-read: All I did was quote Mr. Slep HIMSELF!

HE said SC doesn't have the rights for conversion to hard drive. Yet they've done just that for downloading.

HE said ( FINALLY!) that KJs can't use these downloads in shows.

Insane, if you have problems with these statements, talk to KS- HE MADE THEM!

I merely highlighted them. In other words, he stepped in his own, um....., POOP.

_________________
"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Again he is only saying SC does not have the rights he is not saying others don't.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Time for the devil's advocate here:
KS may have legal advice, but does that make his statements worth more than anyone else's statements?
Maybe it's bad legal advice he's got?
Maybe someone else did get legal advice regarding such?
Maybe they didn't and are only talking out their behind?

My own opinion here:
Just because he presumably has a lawyer, it doesn't make what KS says hold more weight here than what anyone else has to say.
By the same token, just because someone doesn't have legal advice, it doesn't mean what they say is completely wrong.
On this forum, I consider everything here a DEBATE, which doesn't really mean much in the real world, but it DOES open up a world of possibilities for solutions(maybe) while exploring the subject at hand.
Try and remember that, Kurt and InsaneKJ. We aren't in court here. It's a DEBATE, a CONVERSATION.

No, & I have clearly stated on many posts that I do not have a legal background.

I was very adimate about not having a legal background on the many threads that were removed from karaokescene.

Also myself, as well as the company I work for, are just KJ/Host members of the POOP.

ADDED EDIT - However I did state on those threads that our companies lawyers looked at whether we should join The POOP or not & they advised that there was no problem in doing so.