Karaoke Forums

Rigorously? Let's see, the first computer-based karaoke came out around 2002, and if I recall correctly, the first suits were in 2009?

Yep, that's pretty rigorous.

I think he was talking about TM's in general, not just SC.

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Opinion??? It's not an opinion, it says on the Sound Choice CD that UNAUTHORIZED DUPLICATION, PUBLIC PERFORMANCE OR BROADCAST IS A VIOLATION OF APPLICABLE LAWS

I can assure you that it is NOT how I want it to be

Sound Choice said that it was okay to put your tracks on a a computer. THEY let the genie out of the bottle and now they're trying to get the genie back in the bottle. There will come a time when some other, more competent lawyer will get that decision overturned when more of the applicable facts are offered to the court. Rulings get overturned all of the time when more relevant facts come to light.

Nope. Never happened, and certainly not in the unrestricted manner you are suggesting.

Then why are there so many karaoke hosts out there still using their laptops and refusing to play even a customer's original discs? Nothing on my original discs says that if I want to use them in a computer; I have to pay for the permission to do so.

For the purpose of this argument, why should a customer, who has only one Sound Choice disc, have to pay $150 to be audited? That would make the cost of that one disc $180. I see this business as nothing more than strong arm tactics to intimidate people into paying hush money to a company that can no longer compete in the business that they chose so they decide to shake down their customers to keep some money coming in.

That is why there a lots of shows now with 200,000 songs and not one Sound Choice song at all. Karaoke Life goes on and Sound Choice loses all of it's free advertising and whatever good will that they may have had at some point. No one sees the Sound Choice logo at the shows and goes home to check out if there is a web site for that company.

I've been to other shows where it seems like every song being displayed is a Sound Choice track and there is not a disc in sight. Why should I buy a Sound Choice disc if the local karaoke host will not or can not play it for me because they are afraid having a law suit filed against them? And Sound Choice thinks that piracy is the only reason that they're not selling as many discs as they used to.

It was never actually confined to the limitations of a compact disc either.... it was referred to as "a copy" to use while your original disc was archived.

And "a copy" is "a copy" whether it's on a disc, hard drive, flashdrive, DVD or even videotape. The only change to that policy happened almost 10 years later when they decided they could make money off their previous policy by simply changing it.

You can use your discs "in a computer" without any special permission. If you want to make a copy to a computer, you need permission.



A customer who has only one SC disc would in all likelihood be audited at no charge. We have always applied rules of reason to the auditing process.



Then you aren't looking at the whole picture. Do you think that even 10% of the people we sue are capable of passing an audit? We aren't looking for customers to sue, and we're not making money at $150 an audit--that barely covers the costs of the audit.



I can count on one hand the number of karaoke shows I've been to in the past two years where no SC tracks were played.

I would still like to know how your investigators can tell if one is playing from a disc or not.

If I were to right in front of you where you could see me insert a disc into the computer drive and then press play on the players program how do you know if it is playing from a disc or from a hard drive?

I have tested it both ways and I sure can't see any difference. Don't tell me about fuzzy edges and such as the video is produced by both the computer video card and the program's software. Once the file has been read by the program I suppose that the program could change the font size and even the colors if such program was written that way.

I don't think that someones visual proof of fonts and colors produced on a bars TV could stand up as proof as to what the investigator saw after all the TV's colors and sharpness could be out of adjustment thus giving the impression that it was coming from a HD and not a disc.

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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

I'm not going to get into our specific investigative methods. However, it is pretty easy to tell if someone is playing from a disc instead of from a computer, because in the course of a show, the KJ will handle maybe 70-80 discs. That kind of activity is hard to miss.



If I saw you insert a disc into the computer drive and press play, I would assume you were playing from a disc--even if you actually weren't.

I've been to many karaoke shows and sung at most of them. I almost always talk to the KJ when I go, and sometimes I get useful information from that, but most of the time, it's just simply about paying attention. In probably 99% of cases, it's easy to discern discs from a computer, mostly because in 95% of cases there are no discs at all. So it's not as difficult as you might think.

I can sure tell the difference between when I switch from my player to my computer. The player will fill up the screen differently, more squeezed, and sorry the edges are much more defined and edgy. And sorry, on the computer the font edges are smoother, and the screen tends to fill up more, has nothing to do with actually going in and changing the fonts or colors. But I run both computer and player & when doing an a/b comparison with the computer & disc, you CAN see a definitive difference.
Plus most of the computer shows i've ever seen the kj's utilize something like the marquee or next singers coming up - kind of a dead giveaway right there the songs are being played from computer hd.
Not sure which programs play directly from computer CD player, I know MTU Hoster does, but it still has to do a temporary iimport , then deletes after played so it's not 'directly' from disc.

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I'm not talking about playing from a player strictly from a computer with a program that reads the disc in the computer drive. Siglos will do it. It plays both from your CD drive and HD. Also a statement on their web pages says "Play CD+G songs (MP3+G, ZIP, or CD+G discs) with image enhancement features that make CD+G look much better"
So they change the visual look too.

I haven't tried out that program but am going to soon. And it's from Power Karaoke so it might just be good.

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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

So If I spread open my CD holder with all my SC discs showing you would assume that I was playing them off the disc and not the HD.

Still not convinced!

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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

I just tried it with the demo of SwiftElite 4 and it still looks like a computer processed graphic over an external player graphic. But it does play directly from the disc without any import.

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1) This statement is negated by your reply seen in BIG #3).


2) This statement is negated by your reply to 4).

BIG #3) Thank you Jim. If you had given this reply to begin with we could have avoided this thread and a bunch of wasted posts. I have no argument with this reply. I simply wanted to know something that I didn't know before. No debate. I don't know why you made it so difficult. Either way, now I know, and thanks again.

4) Not only does this negate your reply 2), but also contains the statement that the KJ ADDS ( applies) the logo and Trade Dress to the duplicate. This is untrue. They are an inherent part of the duplicated graphics. No one "applied" them- or cared about them for that matter.


All that being said, thanks to Jim I now have the answer ( which, BTW, Timberlea said could not exist) and retract my previous statements regarding the calculation of damages. While I don't believe a such a claim would hold up in SC's case, I now understand the factors by which you would determine a monetary value, which was all that I was asking.

Whew! Digging for new knowledge is tough work!

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I'm not sure that you have it at all, because you contend that parts of my statement negate others, but I have a brief due today so I'll leave it at that. However, I will say that easily more than half of the problem with this is that the way you have asked the question implies certain assumptions that I don't agree with. It's kind of like encountering someone who speaks very good English (as a second language, or even as a first language but being from another country) but who lacks the cultural understanding that underpins a native speaker who grew up in this country. If you and I met in Germany and I asked you "crunchy or creamy" you would know that I'm talking about peanut butter, whereas a German speaker of English might understand what the words mean but probably wouldn't make the connection, or at least not as quickly.

Don't be sad, Jim. I suspect a forum software glitch. You post above showed up as number 11 on the page, my post, to which it replies, was just before it at 10. The actual direct reply in question showed up as number 13 on the page- AFTER the post quoted here.

No one's fault- stuff just happens.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Ginger or Maryanne?

Both, duh...

Maybe if you had a time machine, but you wouldn't today...