Karaoke Forums

In other words, he doesn't even offer legally binding documentation that SC won't come after you later- as they did in regard to those downloads that THEY offered for awhile.

Keep in mind that even the GEM series is only licensed in the UK.

Hey, did anyone read the case from awhile back regarding the owners of "Impossible Dream" vs SC? They at lest claim that not only did SC have no licensing or permission for certain tracks, but never even asked for it.

Kinda makes the Sync law argument moot.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

the laws are almost always behind the tech, how can you make a law for something that doesnt even exist yet? with the way technology is advancing, it could be interresting to see how it gets handled (or doesnt get handled) i wonder why our laws are so much harder to work with. overseas they have the compulsory license, but in the states we have to have to hope the copyright owner approves the request, acquire sync and whatever other licenses, wait for Mars & Jupiter to align to build a shrine to the sun god while standing on one foot.

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

I read it quite some time ago. VERY interesting reading, isn't it?
Very telling, indeed!

Excuse me, I did not say he(personally) violates any law. I very clearly said SOUND CHOICE tippy toes around the LAWS in order to stay legal... and that in my opinion that does not make them CLEAN.

Take GEM series. They sell HOTEL CALIFORNIA with overseas licensing, they encourage duplication... and they do not(per KURT) compensate the original copyright holders for that duplicate copy of the song. That is where the tippy toeing comes in, I am sure the license agreement(disclaimer) makes it clear they are within the law.

LEGAL, YES. CLEAN, is in the eye of the beholder.

ON A SEPARATE NOTE>
I am surprised craigslisters dont just sell used hard drives and state that it is the purchasers responsability to erase the personal collection of 50,000 karaoke tracks. Let the purchaser assume all risks involved... Kinda like a GEM HARD DRIVE license agreement.

I don't care about the situation.

I don't want the cheap KJ's out of business, they make my shows look that much better. I have a few friends that are cheap KJ's that never paid for a single song in their life. They are just trying to make a $1 like anyone else in America.

Where would America be without the guys that ran numbers, bookies, and every other person that did something between the lines of legal and not legal? There are so many jobs being done that people do not pay taxes.


They need to go after all the people that are posting all this karaoke on the internet for free. I think it's a lost cause. the only way for things to be fixed is to make a file format that can't be traded or copied. That's more that likely not going to happen in our lifetime. Everything is open source so that it can be used with any software.

SC was not very smart in this area. With the release of their new GEM series they should have had their own hosting software with their own file format that would only work on one computer plus a backup. With this mistake there are people already downloading these 320kbps mp3+gs.

Link? I have yet to see the GEM series anywhere online.

www.soundchoice.com

You cannot download the GEM series from Soundchoice. I believe he was referring to illegal downloads/torrents which do not exist.

And you know all this how?

It blows my mind that we all sit here and assainate the manus and can't seem to get together about the problem in front of us. Let the manus sort out their own issues. We need to focus only on our part of the industry the KJs themselves. We need to get out and educate the Venues that (this part is going to ruffle feathers) as far as the current law (it's in black in white) goes (and I will give a little grey here) if you are running on a laptop (1:1 ratio and Have TO Prove It since you are taking that risk in appearance and if you feel that you don't have to prove it or you won't show your discs then..........) you will be considered a pirate.

The big problem is we are beating each other up with words and are getting nowhere. All the wannabe lawyers here are just that wannabees! A lot of BS is pass around on this forum on purpose and by accident, a lot like Urban Ledgends. How many of you actually go out and call on venues and instead of educatimg the venues just trash the other KJs and in turn make your self look desperate and stupid.

If you think a KJ is a pirate, then let the manus know and then let them sort it out.
I have no problem in my market with calling out a KJ that is a pirate. First clue, has a hard disc with a whole lot of songs (you pick a number) and downloads on the fly (again another topic of debate and we DO KNOW if the download is SC or CB (which they do) is not legal for now regardless of what anyone on this forum says)or copies the customer disc to their hardrive so they can add it to their own library is nothing more that a pirate.

Has anyone considered approaching the KJ to see if they even know that they are breaking the law. Again they sometimes are operating under the assumption that they are legal because the Jerk they bought their hardrive from told them it was legal. Nuff said for now!

_________________
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!

It a futile effort.

The ONE MANUFACTURER that is FINALLY ATTEMPTING to take a PROACTIVE APPROACH to reducing piracy is getting raked over the coals.

It's really nobody's business what their M.O. is, but I'm guessing recooping SOME of the MILLIONS of dollars they have lost due to piracy is a pretty decent one.

The argument that no pirate has actually went out of business on account of their actions is a weak one. I KNOW that the $50/night host isn't ponying up $6500.00 to become legit. And if this pirate does pay, there's one less pirate ergo LESS PIRACY.

I also love the objection that "legitimate hosts are being targeted." Is there ANY evidence that A.)hosts that prove a 1:1 post-audit B.)disk-based hosts are continued to be named in these suits? Truth be told, computer-based rigs are a red flag. If you're going to format shift (a practice that NO ONE has EVER been given LEGAL permission to do), you are 100% opening Pandora's Box, and you are absolutely 100% responsible for being named in the suit in the first place.

What's another popular rebuttal? Oh yeah, the old "bar owners untimately don't wanna be bothered running the risk of operating an illegal show, and decide to abandon karaoke altogether" deal. . If you're dealing with an owner as wishy-washy as this, you don't have what they call JOB SECURITY in the first place.

How about the old "Impossible Dream hypocrisy" theory? I'd like to think that there has been a "learning curve" of sorts for the manufacturers in this instance. After all, how the synch license applied to the karaoke format wasn't properly defined unitl 1996. This is why the famous Eagles disk was a non-no. To say that the manufacturer intentionally tried to decieve the right-holder when 9,900 permissions were granted in a 10,000 song catalog is laughable. And to label the manufacturers as "pirates" on account of these isolated examples is unconscionable.

Not like it matters, the usual cretins will come out from under their rocks and spew their redundant quasi-legalese when these subjects come up. Kind of a moot point arguing it.

Nicely said!

_________________
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!

[quote="lehidude @ Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:15 pm"][/quote]

That was epic.

There is no reason to continue to argue that the concept of format shifting (for 1:1) is not legal when there is probably a much greater likelyhood that it will be decided in favor of format shifting. THe fact that no entity has ever tried to force it to trial shows that there is little belief in their position by those that proclaim it is illegal (and could financially benifit from a decision that way).

As for those insisting that format shifting is illegal when it is at very worst undecided with the preponderance of evidence favoring it being legal. THey are merely comfortable using an outdated technology of CDs in spite of a far better system existing. If a KJ wishes to continue to use CDs that is their choice, but if they use their ignorance to slander other KJs or proclaim falsehoods they take away the choices of others.

If there was a LAW that stated format shifting was illegal then a business decision to make GEMs by SC would expose that company to a major liablity FAR in excess of any amount that can be extracted from individual KJs. The fact that SC is releasing a product for format shifting shows that format shifting is probably legal according to even SC's legal department (despite any protests to the contrary).

Dr. Fred,
For one to format shift one must go from one format to another. The GEM series is in the computer format already therefore one isn't format shifting the GEM series when copied to your hard drive.

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

The gem series is on a disk. The computer "format" is on a Hard drive.

1 copy to 2 copies.

By the argument you use, if I save the regular CDG file as a .wav on a computer (same "format"/codex as the is on the regular CD) then I am not format shifting. Obviously that is not the case in common use of the word.

I will stop these comments if ANYONE can show a decided court case or legal code where format shifting has actually been found to be illegal in the US for karaoke. Until then I wish those that insist format shifting is illegal to cease their mis-information crusade.

i agree, that was well said. not trying to push back at you, (and g*d knows SC has paid for this mistake repeatedly) how does it differ with SC having 9,900 lisenced songs out of 10,000 in their library and not being a pirate from a kj ahving 9,900 lisenced songs out of 10,00 in their library being a pirate? just want to understand your view on that part. a final answer on this whole thing will just have to wait till REAL lawyers duke it out in court and finally give us some law. this whole "theres no specific law saying we can, but no specific law saying we cant" grey area requires much more schooling than this poor KJ has.

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

Plus if they did pony up the $6K, then their library just got signifcantly more on a even keel - if not far less compared to those companies that have been in business for years. I get told all the time that I have stuff that even the 100K advertised companies don't, so I can only imagine what they'd have after having to go legit.

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

What he was getting at is that most of those discs that were recalled for not having proper licensing was really before such time that the sync licensing (which is promary reason for no karaoke) was believed by most manus to be needed. Those discs consisted of numbers up to approx 8400 or so.
They (SC) has stated on forums including their own in the past how they made mistakes releasing disc on the assumption that they would be granted licensing. And has to pull discs from production when they got word otherwise - Eagles disc was a prime example of that one. Originally released in 94.

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

Lonman spretty much summed it up. There were some shortcomings in getting appropriate licensing as per the 1996 ruling, but as I said to call these shortcomings intentional are ridiculous. Sound Choice has been the standard-bearer for acquiring appropriate permissions, and this hasn't helped them from a competitive standpoint, as less scrupulous companies may have covered songs that BC (former studio manager at Sound Choice) had told us ad-nauseum are "unlicensable."

As for the 700 out-of-print Spotlights, roughly half of those are country disks that simply weren't reprinted/relicensed (since licensing has to be re-acquired for subsequent cd productions) on account of low demand. This also explains why the short-lived Spotlight Select series was predominantly country: they wanted to give KJ's an opportunity to purchase back titles from discontinued disks, filtering those songs out which haven't withstood the test of time. In any event, the majority of the discontinued disks were not based on faulty licesning, it's that they couldn't get re-licensed. Many well-known acts (madonna, green day, the nineties grunge bands, etc) began rescinding their permissions, and disks with those songs on had to get dropped.

Ok I'll bite,

So I have to ask, if format shifting for commercial use has actually been deemed as not legal under Federal copyright law and yet you choose to go with the format, I am ok with that. If I choose to remain with the "outdated" cd format, then I am playing it safe and not exposing my company to unnessary possible litigation or confusion of being a pirate. I consider myself as being very well informed on this subject and will continue to be dilagent in calling out the pirates. I know several kj buddies that run their shows on Laptop and they have All their discs as backup and they are doing what the manus won't have a problem with.

The question I have to ask you is do you have All your original discs for every song on your computer? Now you don't have to answer to me but could you answer if you called upon by the powers that be if it came up? Otherwise, why are you fighting all this anyway? Seems to me that if you were legal as you say (even if you shifted all your discs to your computer) you'd be not bashing the manus like you do. Why are you so defensive?

_________________
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!