Karaoke Forums

Again, that by itself is not the issue. It's the concern-trolling. It's one thing to raise issues out of altruism or genuine curiosity. It's quite another to make a bunch of misleading statements to drive an agenda.

So, what are you saying here? Are you saying that a person who chooses not to enroll in the HELP Program, and decides to either
1. NOT use SC tracks at his/her show,
OR
2. only play SC Tracks from an original disc, on a Disc Player
is foolish?

Ah, the often wayward analogy rears its ugly head again.....

or if HELP gets everyone paid, what about a lighter rate for the songs and after XX amount of time it is paid for as if buying the discs, everyone is compensated for the music and it is done but, like new SC music, only for certified or gem owners? if it is good in perpituity, why not as a means to collect money from expanding legit hosts?


few years back no manufacturer had ever sued a karaoke operator for copyright infringement.


you, and most, seem to ignore the fact that every pirate KJ has half a dozen or more singers with 100,000+ libraries downloaded from torrents or shared. that goes for every legal host as well. YOU have singers who have larger libraries than you do and paid $0.00 for it. pirate KJ's are a threat, but the SINGERS are a bigger threat and have stolen many times more than the KJ's. i think the biggest hurt to the manus was not from the KJ's who had been sharing files since CD duplicators came out, but from the singers who USED to buy their own versions to cary with them and began downloading them through the torrents and sharing amongst themselves....and everyone else INCLUDING supplying hosts.

and this part i can't quite explain...
it is the older crowd that steals the most. the younger crowds don;t mind buying a song, but where i get the most offers of "i can just copy you all my songs, i have over 100,000" is at the VFW, DAV, Eagles, American Legion and the crowds over 60. THEY see no problem stealing and sharing while the youngsters DO seem to see the problem.

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

That is where it fails...

_________________
-Chris

No. The risky behavior here is using SC tracks from non-original media. That wouldn't apply to either of your scenarios (which would be the equivalent, in my analogy, of not driving at all).

The question is, if you are using unauthorized SC tracks on non-original media, should you sign up for HELP and get square with the entity that's actually suing people like you (and square with a significant and growing number of publishers at the same time), or should you not sign up for HELP on the theory that signing up makes it marginally easier for publishers to find and sue you?

One of those options sounds pretty foolish to me. I'm biased, of course, but not that biased.

That may be true but it's the pirates running shows that are profiting from it. Unfortunately, there's not much you can do to stop customers from downloading... except to close down torrent and similar sites.

However, there is something YOU can do... refuse to play a customers tracks unless the original manufacturer disc is provided. No, flash drive, no SD card, no burns... nothing. If we all did that, people might get the message but unfortunately, like pirates, some people just don't care.

_________________
Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

I can't explain that, either.

But to your larger point, we can only deal with what we can deal with. Have these people stolen from us? Most definitely. And home piracy is almost certainly a larger problem overall than is commercial piracy, in terms of the value of what has been taken. But we don't have any effective tools to deal with them. The courts have been extremely unfriendly to those who have tried to police home piracy unless the plaintiffs could identify the home pirate without special process.

We could probably design a program to collect voluntary subscription money from home pirates, but without any effective tools to drive subscriptions other than a guilt trip, I predict low compliance. But I'll look into it. How many home users would pay $4 a month for absolution?

But I didn't state the risky behavior here. I stated the safe behavior (as compared in your analogy to the reference of "CHOOSING TO DRIVE FOR SAFETY REASONS" ). And the way your anaology reads, the safe behavior is being compared to being FOOLISH. I do not think that last sentence, "Choosing to drive for safety reasons...", could be compared to a statement like Choosing to pirate SC Song tracks and NOT get a HELP License... You took that example above and twisted it around to make it sound like doing a risky behavior (pirating tracks), and then not subscribing to HELP (on the basis of being afraid you'll be sued by the publishers instead), was thought to be a safe behavior.

BIG RED FONTS AND CAPITAL LETTERS!!!!!

That is all.

Perhaps because of your profession, you see things the way you do. I am not a lawyer and am not particularly interested in sparring with one. I will reiterate that my questions and concerns are genuine. They are important to me. The most important point I was hoping to get confirmation on was Media Shifting. I have always interpreted the laws to be pretty clear and straightforward. I have elected to stay ODB as a result. Your new HELP program was the first of it’s kind that I have seen. Perhaps there have been others in the past, but I never looked at them if there were. I have always hoped that I would get to the point that copying the discs I bought, would be approved of by the publishers under whatever conditions they want to require. Sadly, we are nowhere near that point.

My confusion was born out of my misunderstanding of the differences between trademark use and copyrights of the musical compositions etc. I took the time to learn the differences and was still unsure if your new license was covering media shift. I asked the questions because at first I wasn’t paying attention to the disclaimers (my mistake). Once I read them, I asked and caught all the flack that I had some “agenda”. You finally addressed the question when you said that the majority of HELP licensees were already in violation of copyrights as result of the media shift. But since the publishers have never sued an operator and PEP has, thats all we should care about.

Although it was a contentious process to get the answers I was seeking, I am satisfied. I am much older than you and admittedly set in my ways. My risk tolerance is different than yours and perhaps many others here. I don’t agree with your comparison to air travel with it’s proven track record and likelihood of continuity in the coming years. The landscape of the music industry and litigation is far more difficult to predict. Revenue streams and profit margins are changing for a variety of reasons and I don’t accept your prognosis that we won’t see publishers have a change of approach towards copyright infringers. You are entitled to discount and belittle my concerns all you want. But I think that the publishers in this country have started to take more notice of the karaoke industry and that is not necessarily a good thing. You just settled with them, Digitrax and Tricerasoft are next and their targets are diminishing. You call me a wailing fear monger but consider how easy it would be to identify any venue that is using a computer to play karaoke and add them to one big suit. You say the likelihood is next to impossible and I say why not? It would be a new, potentially huge new source of revenue which is very similar to yours.

profit or no profit does not change the amount of money stolen from SC. Your singers stealing it means more money stolen from SC and putting SC in this position.


SF, Zoom, SBI, KaraokeVerison, MM, Abraxa, CB, Mr Entertainer, Sing King, Musicfactory, Sundown, Priddis, DK, Karaoke Cloud, AllStar...a flash drive IS ORIGINAL MEDIA. they were all sent on digital media or downloads so telling my customers that they can not use the music they did pay for because others don't is not a smart business decision. also, look at the other side of it...
if we no longer allow people to buy songs (like the younger crowd is doing) and bring them in to sing, they will stop buying them. why buy anything you can not use? so the manus are now losing the people who are actually PAYING for music all because you decided not to play legally purchased music. now is that helping or hurting the manus?

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

I don't think sales of karaoke on what ever medium to consumers has ever been done with the intention of consumers taking their media to shows.

I will posit that **most** of the folks that bring karaoke music from home to play at a karaoke bar pirated their music anyway. So there has never been an established norm of people bringing in music **they paid for**.

There are of course exceptions.

In my area, people just simply do not bring in discs or USB or anything else. I don't want them to have to either. Why should a customer be responsible for keeping track of discs, USB drives, etc...... while drinking?

Of course that isn't my primary reason for not playing customer music. My primary reason is that no one brings it in.

_________________
-Chris

I have NO way to play outside media since I stopped using Compuhost and I like it that way because I don't have to worry about if the flash drive is infected or not. My show machine, except for updates, does not go on the net for that reason and antivirus software has been known to affect the playability of karaoke software. I use a router to connect on a noninternet connection for my kiosk. As to how I get new songs it is usually using my home computer and then transferring the song to my show computer's external drive.

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

Now if you made the HELP thing $4 to $20 a month for KJs, EVERYONE would jump on it, I think. Even I could get behind that program!!

_________________
I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

So using original discs or avoiding using SC is equivalent to not driving at all? Not hardly..

I think Stingray should use their resources and and the lack of any conflicts of interest with SC and just license their catalog for digital download in the US. Give a discount or some sort of incentive for legit SC CDG disc owners. Do something creative to get their content into the hands of the KJ's who want it and are willing to pay. The backlash that has been created by SC (whether you think it is justified or not) does not diminish the appetite for the content. People didn't buy SC because they thought the title screen/logo were so awesome - it was the music that Derek and his studio pumped out.

Stingray has the money, the catalog, the technology and relationships with the publishers to make such a service available in no time.

That would be so awesome!! I would love to buy SC songs one song at a time. Probably never happen, though.

_________________
I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

I agree... it would be awesome...the more I think about it the more sense it would make. Stingray had a deal that they would stay out of the US market so SC could continue to sell physical discs. We all know how that turned out... They took the catalog and digitised it and ofer it as mp3+g and HD and they stream it. All the things that people actually want. They pay licensing to offer their channel on all kinds of services, so I can't imagine it would be too big a stretch to pay whatever advances to get the US rights to offer the same here.

I thought about those other manufacturers you list as I was writing my post. However, the focus of this thread has been about Sound Choice® and using original media. I should have been more clear.

With that said, anyone who has ever brought in their own music for me to play on a flash drive, usually consists of 90% SC and 10% Chartbuster. No customer has ever brought me songs to play that included any of the non U.S. brands you list above.

So, back to my response above. If you want to help and do your part, don't play a customer's media unless it consists of:

1. a flash drive containing tracks from one of the manufacturers listed above (in that case, we have to assume they were legally purchased and downloaded)
2. original U.S. manufacturer material (SC, Chartbuster, DK) which we know was primarily made available in disc form.

But if you really want to be sure, don't play any customer's media at all. If they like you, they will still keep coming back.

_________________
Electro-Voice Evolve 50... Taking Sound To The Next Level.

I was doing that for a while. I refused to play any burns or any other form of customer owned Karaoke. Some DID stop coming to my shows because the guy down the block WOULD play them. I would rather have those people paying for drinks and food at my venues. Of course, I will only do it for people I know, and who come often. I will not do it for strangers, because you never know if they are some inspector from SC or PR.

_________________
I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE