Karaoke Forums

I'm asking simply because I don't know:

Someone posted on another forum that they take a manufacturer's karaoke track, "bastardize" (negatively alter) it, then put it up on P2P sites for those who try to get tracks for nothing.

Of course, my first thought was " What a cool way to get track thieves (real pirates) to download crappy tracks! I like it!"

Then I started thinking about it. This person is actually altering tracks, then publishing them on on public pirate sites as the factory's product- specifically to mislead people- though in this case track thieves.

While the intent behind the idea sounds good, and it IS a pirate site, the tracks are still being represented as the karaoke manufacturer's product. Not only is it not the mfrs. product, but it is called so even though the quality has been deliberately destroyed.

I don't know which way to look at it.

1) It's on pirate sites, so the product shouldn't be downloaded anyway- therefore it's the track thieves' problem.

or

2) Product is being deliberately negatively altered, but is being represented as the manufacturer's original. Someone hearing one of those versions at a track thief's show could assume that track in question is an original mfrs. track, and that their version sucks, causing damage to the original mfrs. reputation- and would therefore be actionable.


Which would it be? Is it both? By that I mean that I'm pretty sure the thief isn't going to sue anyone, so it IS their problem. However, since the tracks shouldn't have been downloaded anyway, would those who alter the product be protected from a lawsuit?

I'm GUESSING that it may be actionable. However, I'm also guessing the mfrs. would be unaware of the damage to their reps that it may cause, and would maybe leave it alone and let the thieves beware?

Any thoughts?

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I highly doubt that the Manu's rep is going t be affected in any way except for the pirate's, who isn't a paying customer to begin with.

My best guess is that the only one with legal authority to pursue legal action would be the Manu's and they're not gonna hear about it because they were never legally gotten by the pirate anyway.

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

Be a good prospect for a GEM set...

this would be one time i would not mind seeing someone put a virus up. embed it into the tracks so when they play popular songs...crash.....right in the middle of everything. make them random and very ugly, add them to a bastardized rip of the GEM, and let the pirates suffer. what could they do? "i was trying to steal their music and it gave me a virus killing my computer"

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

Then why aren't they doing it with an SC or CB track and not PHM?
If SC and CB are the "most popular" why wouldn't they use those tracks?

What amazes me about this is that this is being perpetrated by "Certified" and "Vetted" KJ's who apparently know their way around IRQ and P2P sharing sites.... why would they even know any of this unless they also were using these sites for sharing? Boggles the mind....

So, what we actually have here is a couple of "Certified KJ's" that are actively participating in illegal file-sharing sites. Nice. If any of these manufacturers wanted to do what they are describing, they are perfectly capable of doing so themselves. I know if I was PHM, I'd be pretty pissed off that they have singled out my brand to "mangle and upload" and purposely sidestepped SC and CB.

Besides, mp3+g files are data files that are read not a program file that needs to be "activated." A virus can only take control of your computer if you give it control first.

This is why they proclaim that they "are trying to figure out a way" to do this and haven't been able to yet. All they've succeeded in doing is mangling PHM's product.

Torrent site are rife with the virus species.

Many songs are placed there with a virus inside..

I suspect the manus do that.. Payback and like that..

Karaoke tracks could be the same..

And, there are virii that do not not need to be "In Control" to run..

Illegal or legal hummmm.

If they were to succeed, and the track ended up on thousand of kjs computers and the lyrics were to pop up spoiled and a message that read something like "this karaoke track was stolen and not paid for" be about the same as using a picture on a site that sells pictures and someone decided to use the sample picture and not pay for it and the publishers water mark was displayed across the face of it. This would once again show that the torrent sites are nothing but pirate havens and need to be stopped. Can you actually buy anything legally at any of these sites?

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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!

I read all the post here and I either missed any reference to PHM being the brand of track uploaded or it isnt here, help me with that.

Personally, I think the whole idea is a good one, and would support the manus or anyone else that is able to figure a way to make it work. I know several kjs that are not "certified" that also agree with this idea. Chip, if we were to be immune from any legal actions if we did this, with your vast knowledge of programming and since you don't support piracy, you could write the program that could be imbedded into the tracks and share it with us? After all, none of us here support the thieves and we could imbedd it into a orphaned manus product line not one of the major manus product.

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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!

I don't own any IRQ software, I've never used it, I've never been to a torrent site. The problem is that you are NOT immune in the least from legal actions. The US Patriot Act (sec 814) offers punishment for those who "damage or gain unauthorized access to a protected computer, causing financial or medical damages." And that's a pretty wide definition because if they damage a machine, and can't be located then guess what? PHM is the one that will get the heat since their name is the only identifiable portion of the file.

What you've been discussing is plainly illegal and I for one, will have no part of it - No matter how "useful in the fight against piracy" you believe it to be.

Your "certified KJ" members are publicly conspiring (and soliciting assistance) to commit an illegal act -a felony. How honest of them. Trademark infringement is not a felony.... what you are describing clearly is.

And jdmeister, I hate to disagree with you however, a virus can only be activated if the virus itself - or the host program it is attached to - is
activated. It is entirely possible to download a virus and never activate it.... (not likely these days, but still possible.)

I never looked at it from the Patriot Act point of view, thanks for the heads up. I don't think anyone discussing this really wants to commit a felony or any crime. Planting a virus could have far reaching effects, and that is not a good idea.
People are just searching for a way to put up spoiled products that is unuseable for performance. I would however question what the downloader really would do, call the cops and complain that he was stealing music and the track he stole had a virus attached that screwed up his computer. That would be like the dope dealer calling the cops to say someone robbed him of his stash.
Def don't want to piss off Mother Country. Sometimes pranks have really harmless intent then something can go terribly wrong and getting nabbed by the feds, Oh thats bad
I have never been on a torrent site as well so I don't know what it take to put up a file anyway. Do you see the harm in uploading a spoiled version (scrambled lyrics) of a karaoke track if the manu were no longer in business? Can't really see any law that would be violated, hmmmmm.

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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!

OK, there's a point being completely ignored. Yeah, it's great that pirates are being fooled into downloading crap tracks, as I stated earlier.

Please think a bit deeper. Here we have deliberately degraded mfr.'s tracks being posted and and publicly published as original mfrs. tracks. This means:

A) For whatever the intent, these tracks are still deliberately misrepresented as mfr. originals. In other words, they seem as actionable as as all the cases that SC pursues.

B) By misrepresenting negatively altered mfrs.' product as originals, they are causing said mfr. to look like they put out an inferior product- people who try to sing using the altered product willhave no idea that it's not the original. This means that they will think that that mfr. makes an inferior product. To me, this not only seems actionable, but would suing would almost be required by the mfrs. simply to retain a good reputation. Also, since misrepresentaion is involved, criminal charges might well be a distinct possibility.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Contrary to popular belief, you cannot commit a crime in the interest of preventing a crime. That's why DEA cops can't sell drugs to catch users... they can only buy them to catch dealers.


You would think that except it's more like the burglar suing the homeowner because he ran into a booby-trap.





Not worth the time to do it. The horse is out of the barn, you'll never get rid of the tracks this way.

OK, of all the posts on this thread, only ONE was germaine to the OP. Chip feels that it's actionable.

Are there any opposing views, and if so, please explain.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Of course it's actionable and clearly illegal, but the real crime is the colossal waste of time.

It wouldn't work by putting out one or two or even a few songs, because anyone downloading them would certainly test them first and they would never see an audience. In order to slip past a test they would have to be buried in a library of songs which means distributing perfectly good material along with it. That's fighting pirates with piracy! Just plain silly.

If the goal is to humiliate the pirate during his show, then maybe we should sneak up on him and give him a wedgie or catch him in the bathroom and give him a swirlie, or a towel snap, or moon him or maybe a noogie.....

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KNOW THYSELF

Not necessarily, some of the pirate shows i've seen in the past downloaded on the spot and played.

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

A wedgie, a swirly AND a noogie?
That's a little overboard ain't it capt'n?

You are merciless!

Chip, I spent 6 hours yesterday removing a "Drive by download" virus from a customers computer..

It is possible for the virus to activate itself..

The resolve may be to format and install the OS again..(What I did) as these are deeply embedded into Windows...



In an effort to save the customer data files, I removed the drive and plugged it into the USB port on my laptop with a USB adapter...

That act infected my laptop with the same virus. My virus scanner caught it, and I was OK..

So regardless of beliefs, many things are possible..

My customer received an email from a known source, and he viewed it..

Bam.. he was hooked.. and then, he let it go for a week or so, thinking it was nothing bad..

I saved his data, and formatted his drive.. I'll deliver the computer today..

What if the manus were to do it themselves, then is it actionable?

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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!

okay, then jdmeister, we can agree to disagree.

The scenario you described above, clearly states that a virus, "can be downloaded or even executed." The key word here is executed. Granted, it may be buried deep inside something else that is acting as a "carrier." In that carrier could be a flash video, or any number of other supported file types.

If you are transferring data from the external drive onto your laptop, then I don't see how a virus – if it is simply being copied bit for bit – can possibly activate and infect your laptop. I would wager that your virus scanner recognized the patterns of bytes within the files you were transferring and detected them as a virus. i.e. your virus scanner caught it before it was activated.

Being the grumpy old fellow that I am, I blame the entire existence of viruses on Microsoft. Back in nearly 80's, Microsoft denied the fact that there were any "terminate and stay resident" programs, also known as TSRs. These were programs that once activated, would hide in memory to do what ever background task, they were designed to accomplish. One of the first uses of these programs were spellcheckers for word processing programs.

I also understand that there are plenty of people that are computer illiterate with computers connected to the Internet, and that by auto updating their computer, it will "enhance their web experience." However, allowing programs on the web to auto install/activate remotely, is what gives that hackers their power. You'll notice that databases used on the web must use Microsoft structured query language (sql) because it is designed so that programmers cannot specifically perform writes or reads that access hard drives directly. It's a safety measure that protects the servers, but there is no similar protection for the users at the other end. .

I believe that all browsers should have an option that would allow the user to force the browser to get a confirmation before anything is downloaded/activated on the remote system.

If their virus were to damage any other computer or cause medical or financial damage, it is still a felony. It doesn't matter where it comes from. you cannot break the law in an effort to prevent crime. Any kind of crime, and/or violation of civil laws.

I understand that you want to lay out "poisoned fruit" for the Pirates to steal, however, it is not that simple.

These are questions you should be asking of HarringtonLaw. After all, isn't he your guru of intellectual property law?