Karaoke Forums

I think a problem with karaoke is that while it is a complex process it is very very difficult to do it 100% legal.

Set aside the examples of people who blatantly download 10,000 songs or bars that do not pay their ascap/bmi fees that are obviously illegal. Sure that is something to easily avoid.

It is a bit more difficult to make sure that every CD one buys is truly 100% legit. Some of the major manus have been involved in legal cases (Priddis, Panorama) and certainly if one buys one of their cds even if in good faith one is no longer 100% legal.

Sure a company like SC maintains the appearance of a legit upright company, but they probably are negotiating with well over 1000 different entities (songwriters and their managements) for terms on karaoke production. Sometimes the rights to two songs written by the same artist may be controlled by separate publishers. The whole concept of legal production in every single case is mind numbing. Even when approval is granted, to make a karaoke version, sometimes the person granting that approval may not have the legal rights to do so.

Sure it is quite clear that buying a 100,000 song hard drive for $400 should set off warning bells for anyone with a hint of curiosity. But buying many the commonly sold disk sets are of questionable legitimacy. Some of the sets out there (Supercore, SGB, Dangerous etc) are selling at such low prices one seriously has to wonder if the licence fees have all been paid. The fact that some manus don't even have a web presence could be seen as an indication of "guilt".

Many disk sets are sold at discounts that makes one wonder if they even pay the workers in the 3rd world sweatshops duplicating the disks. Sometimes  sets are at very steep discounts that makes one wonder if they are even iligit copies of a manu that is already not following the letter of the law.

On the other hand there are legitimate clearances of overstock that can be found at low prices. One never really knows.

Sure one can only buy disks from reputable manus, but even then it appears that there are many "fake" disks out there, and some of those fakes are difficult to detect. Especially in advance.

Some stores may be selling the "fake disks" at or near full price as well. One would suspect a new release SC disk selling at $4 new, but if they sold the same disk for $18 one would have no reason to suspect.

Even buying direct from the manu one will always wonder if the manu made a few extra disks more than they reported to the owner of the songs rights, or if they paid them at all.

The problem is similar to a economic theory proposed by the Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto. In his view the cost of complying with ALL of the laws in some situations results in an unreasonable burden. For example in one of his case studies  it took 289 days to set up a legal 1 employe business in Peru, an totally unreasonable level of beauracracy for a poor country. The net result is that in Peru due to the high bureaucratic cost of opening a business nearly all of the small businesses ignore nearly all of the laws and are therefore illegal.

While many of us attempt to be as legal as possible, realistically few Karaoke KJs can say for sure that every song they own is a 100% legal copy. Fewer still pay the social security on the occasional tip, or verify with BMI/ASCAP that the bar is up to date on their fees. Others may have violated noise oridnances when the decibels went a bit too loud or the music went 2 minutes past the closing time.

I am not saying that laws should be flaunted, far from it, I wish the industry was far more legit not less. But that the whole Karaoke industry is on a slippery slope of legality. One can never know that every step involved in the supply chain is legit. Since our whole industry is on such a slippery slope legally, it is not surprising that a few KJs throw in the towel and don't even attempt to pretend to be legal. Most of them so far have gotten away with it. Even those of us who attempt to be legit as possible live in fear that something that we may have overlooked may not be.

I don't live in fear. I believe that if you make a good faith effort to do a reasonable amount to comply with laws, you will not be bothered. If you are bothered, then I believe it is easy to extract yourself from the difficulties.

I believe there are many, many, people who flout the law egregiously, and those will likely be the targets. They are easily found.

I agree that with a good faith effort to comply with the laws one is relatively safe for now as a KJ. The main problem is that a "Pirate" KJ who understands Karaoke can say look at pretty much any significant karaoke setup and find at least a few songs that are most likely not legal. Hence the "Pirate" KJ who flaunts the law can say with some justification "Hey your not perfect either! Don't complain about the fact I downloaded 50k songs".

Problem is in the eye of the law one illegal song can be as bad as 50,000 for the KJ. While a common sense approach sees the difference the law does not. The recent court case for music downloads only charged the woman with copying 24 songs if I remember correctly.

I admit I have downloaded a few Midi Karaoke songs just out of curiosity to see how bad they really were. They are not on my songlist, and never will make it there. But in the eyes of the law this makes me the same as the songpirate who downloaded 100k songs. Every song I have on my songlist is purchased, but I can never know if the couple dozen or so places I have bought them from are all legit.

I don't give a crap what someone like that says. They know the difference, and so do I.

Besides, I am not in the police business and I wouldn't be confronting someone else on their compliance or lack thereof. The most I have done is to point out that my collection is legally obtained, leaving others to draw their own conclusions about other people.

In my case, I am an amateur so I have had relatively few situations like that.


That is what they focused on in the evidence. In fact, the general accusation was for thousands of songs. And that was someone distributing to others, a far cry from format-shifted songs with original CDs in hand.


I wasn't even aware that the MIDI songs were illegal. It isn't illegal to play music in your own home, providing that you don't illegally copy someone else's recording. MIDI is not that, so unless you performed it publicly and didn't pay ASCAP/BMI I believe you did nothing wrong.


You can live in fear if you want to. I won't worry about that; I strongly believe that someone else who is much more egregiously breaking the law will be the test case, not me. I think that fearing a lightning strike is a much more realistic worry.

I have something to fear, too, were that realistic. Being relatively well off, I have quite a bit to lose.

The speed limit here is 65mph on the major highways, yet many if not MOST exceed that on a daily basis.   Is there a difference between 57mph vs 96 mph ?
Both are "breaking the established" laws ?  

Is there a difference between one illegal cdg  song versus 50,000 ?

It's not about whether the songs are 100% legal or not.
As a working KJ it's about providing a level of service HIGHER than that of your competetion.   Let the LAWYERS  deal with all the other  :hi5:  :hi5:  :hi5: crap