Karaoke Forums

I would think the publishers would do that with DJs before KJs because there are so many more of them and much more music to license. I still say the home users are the biggest pirates but you'll never see a sound choice or pr legal filing naming 10 home users in a city.

Nah, there is no money in it. What are they going to do, take peoples' houses?? That would go over big. Imagine THAT PR nightmare.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

hey according to a local they (collection agency) are taking his house away for a legal judgement....not sure if it was his karaoke judgement or another one however.

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"Integrity is choosing your thoughts, words and actions based on your principles and values rather than for your personal gain."
Unknown
"if a man has integrity, nothing else matters, If a man has no integrity, nothing else matters."
Lee McGuffey

Copying for private use is allowed under the Copyright Act.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Downloading without paying is not.

You are correct, theft is theft and counterfeiting is counterfeiting. But copying what you own for your own personal use is fine under the Copyright Act. Notice what I said PERSONAL not COMMERCIAL. Again, if you don't like it, contact your local federal representative.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

The document I posted stated that it's a grey area, and probably wouldn't be pursued in court. That is why SC goes after Trademark infringement and not copyright infringement. They would probably lose on those grounds.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Then why is PR suing under both ?

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"Integrity is choosing your thoughts, words and actions based on your principles and values rather than for your personal gain."
Unknown
"if a man has integrity, nothing else matters, If a man has no integrity, nothing else matters."
Lee McGuffey

They must have cut some deal with publishers. They don't own the copyrights to those songs. They just own the trademarks. They are probably trying to recoup money for the various publishers of the original music.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Copyrights are transferable, PR may well have acquired the copyrights to the songs CB did have as well as the trademarks. I know SC did copyright all of their versions (I saw them in the copyright archives), I believe I saw CB did the same but cannot remember.

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

I believe Smooth is under an illusion. Take for example Lennon-McCartney's "Yesterday" which was copyrighted by them. Yes they own the copyright but they would licence it out to other artists who would arrange it differently and record it. Those arrangements and recordings are copyrighted by those artists and arrangers. Of course out of those arrangements Lennon-McCartney, their heirs, or present copyright holders, would get their cut. Karaoke arrangements are no different. They own the copyright of their arrangement. To take it further, take any of the Masters, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, or whoever. All their music is in what is known as the public domain and no copyright payment is due. However, when London Symphony or Boston Symphony put out an album with any of their works, that album is copyrighted. If you want to use their recordings publicly or on TV or the movies, you have to pay them for that privilege.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

The days of music piracy giving anyone an unfair advantage are long over.
These days, the cost of music is minimal compared to the cost of audio equipment, lighting, vehicle, maintenance, insurance, gasoline, props, and time.
I could start from scratch today without owning a single disc or a single track on my hard drive.
I could still advertise and claim to have over 200,000 songs.
I could use icroons.com as my book, and purchase tracks as requests come in.
Each successive show would cost me less in music because of the tendency to repeat most songs.
I could be competitive with the largest disc owner in town without pirating any music and I could be competitive with the biggest pirate in town without spending much more than that pirate.
The difference in overhead in either case would be everything else I listed other than music.
When it comes to music, the playing field is level.
Success comes from good business sense, attention to detail, talent and a little luck sometimes.
Success does not come from longing for those good old days and trying re-live them like a child who constantly repeats the same thing that got a laugh once, or a singer that sings the same song every night in search of that same round of applause that came the first time.
If you truly believe that a few dollars worth of music cost is the only thing that allows someone to compete on a level higher than yours, then you better be finding a new line of work; because the good new days are here and buggy whips are obsolete.

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KNOW THYSELF

That is exactly what I am doing. I got a core set of music and since then I have been buying single downloads as requests come in. My collection is growing steadily, but it is growing based on what my customers want to sing, not just for the sake of growth with thousands of songs that may never get sung.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

GREAT POST, Earthling, and completely true.

I'll go you one better. As an OMD host I carry way fewer tracks than most of PC based hosts around here, whether pirates or not- none have less than 35K songs ( I carry between 12 and 18K depending on the venue and/or event, with another 8K at home waiting to be entered or have been culled)- and no one cares. It is not, nor has it EVER been the library that makes a good show work- at least around here.

True pirates (track thieves) are lowlife by definition, but the time to for unsuccessful hosts to blame all of their woes on them is past.

A PC host ( and I'm told most are these days) has access to everything that every other host has.

Almost.

Strangely enough, OMD hosts who are still around from the beginning may actually have quality tracks of songs on older discs that won't normally be found in cyberspace (eliminating the crappy all pirate sites that I've read of here- whose versions all seem to agree... suck.)

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

i agree 100%.
the driving down prices started way before that. the host coming in with Idolmakers, SGB, and other $10.00 for 500 songs sets started that trend.

i am with you Joe, i only have about 14,000 songs including dupes, but i can buy most anything my singer may want on the fly from one of several companies.

the pirates are not causing that much issue, any more than normal bottom feeders.
"blame the pirates" gets thrown around like the Germans used "blame the jews". did they really cause the problems, if you look at it a certain way....sure. is there another more plausible cause of the problems?.....you bet.

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

Why would anyone use icroons as a book to begin with since half the songs are not available for download? Anything from SAT is no longer a valid link until they fix is to work with select karaoke and then you have the songs that are available on disc with NO link. Someone asks for that song only on disc - answer - sorry no! Plus they don't list anything from All Star or DTE which is quite a bit.

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

I just took a look and it looks like iCroons replaced all the SAT links with KD.CA links.

I am promoting iCroons as a song book for several of reasons -

1) *I* have a massive selection of discs already. So for a large number of the older tracks, I have some version of it already. Does not apply to everyone of course.

2) The items that have links, I can get and so can singers. Good one-stop-shopping place for them.

3) It supports Bob Latshaw. He gets a few pennies every time someone buys a song from an iCroons link. This in turn support development of future products.

4) Anyone with a browser capable device can view the list

5) I like the versions of tracks I get through iCroons. I don't miss DT or ASK tracks.


-Chris

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-Chris

I am not seeing how it is possible for two different companies (CB and PR and/or WWD) to own the copyrights for the recordings AT THE SAME TIME...

It would be no different than two or more people owning the copyright of the same song at the same time.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

In this instance, that doesn't make sense to me. If someone copyrights the production of a song for karaoke use (CB), how can another entity also have a copyright of the same production for karaoke use (DT)? I can see how a copyright can be TRANSFERRED, but not held consecutively when both companies were not involved in its production. However, if this is a situation where a company might be taking advantage of loopholes that may exist in the system during this whole hard-media to digital transition, then it should give more opportunities for the consumers of these products to complain...