Karaoke Forums

On appeal. Please tell the truth.

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/circui ... 6/13-4105/

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-- Mark

But Apple owns the entirety of the i-phone. The only thing that Sound Choice actually owns is their logo and that logo will never be part of the new tracks. The rest of the tracks;(the lyrics and the music) don't belong to Sound Choice so they have no rights to file any legal action in regard to the music or lyrics. Even if they owned what they like to call their "Trade Dress"; that is also changed to the point of unrecognizability. You lose!

True or False: Any Artist that records a cover version of a song, doesnt own the track. They only own their name.

This is what BobPirateFan4Life doesn't understand. Even though SC sold the rights to their recorded renditions to Stingray Music, doesn't mean that a copyright infringement case can not be brought against copying only the music portion. Stingray owns those music portions and SC does work hand in hand with Stingray at times. Whether or not Stingray brings suit, we will have to see.

I wonder if any of the "logo-free" SC songs BobPirateFan4Life has made are circulating on the torrents or IRC?

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=28622&start=60#p370967

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-- Mark

I didn't say that it bothered me or not in that post. I just CORRECTED it for you to reflect a MORE ACCURATE statement. I have called you out on this before... You have a tendency to make statements that are very generalized (and NO, you are NOT the ONLY ONE who has been guilty of that here), and make them sound like it applies to every Karaoke brand out there, when in fact these rules you point out ONLY apply to SC. And, when you omit (what one might consider to be) a little thing, others (such as the actual venues) interpret things as a whole, and not just as a reference to SC product only. AND THAT is what I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH!!!

As a rule, crime rings are not sued... Analogies.....

The difference is the crime ring is making the exact duplicates to sell as iPhone and IPads, creating confusion in the market place. The average host or hostess is not making product and then trying to sell it as original SC product.

True in most cases.

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KNOW THYSELF

Someone did copy i-phone design & software for their own and got nailed for it. Samsung had to pay a HEFTY $1 billion in damages to Apple.

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

You don’t seem to understand the concept of a derivative work.
In a derivative work the only thing that is protected by copyright law is the part that is significantly different from the original.
Since karaoke tracks are not significantly different from the original copyrighted work, the creators of karaoke works are not afforded protection under copyright law.
Here’s a citation for you:

This is perhaps one reason why we don’t see much action in going after hard drive sellers.

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KNOW THYSELF

Of all the bizarre things that have been said on this board, this has to be one of the most bizarre.

The average host--and let's face it, the average host is at least mostly a pirate--is most certainly making a product and trying to sell it as original, legitimate product.

You can couch it in terms of selling a service, and yes, karaoke hosting is a service. But it is also about access to a catalog, and you cannot seriously argue that for most hosts, especially pirate hosts, the extensive nature of the available catalog isn't a selling point.

And it has to be that way to some extent. Take away your entire catalog--no accompaniment tracks available at all--and you have nothing to sell. It doesn't matter how charismatic you are, or how good you are at working a mixer, or how powerful and responsive your speakers are. If you don't have music, you don't have karaoke. (The exception being live band karaoke, which is a choice, of course.)

And you're kidding yourself if you say the brand doesn't matter to some extent. If the brand doesn't matter, why steal from SC? There are lots of defunct or foreign manus out there, whose product you can just as easily steal and get away with it much more easily because you know they aren't coming back from the dead or crossing an ocean to sue you. Why fight so hard--as you do--against SC's efforts to keep people from stealing from it, when you can just drop the brand and avoid the issue?

It's because the brand matters. It definitely matters to people who know karaoke. It matters even to the casual karaoke singer, in ways they don't fully appreciate, because when it's an SC track, more often than not, it's going to sound pretty much exactly like what they hear on the radio. I don't know about you, but when I get up on the stage to perform, I'm there to perform. I want to impress and entertain the crowd with a song well sung and well accompanied. I can't get that with something that sounds like it was put together with a dime-store midi encoder in somebody's back office.

I know that nobody goes to a karaoke show to stare at logos. That's not what this is about. It's about the very thing that the trademark laws were enacted to protect: Brand image. Quality control. Reliability. The association of a mark with a company's goodwill, built over decades. When a patron sees the SC logo on the screen, it means something important.

Some people prefer the taste of Coke and won't accept a substitute. Some people don't care. If you go to a restaurant and order a Coke, maybe you care that what you're getting is genuine Coca-Cola, and maybe you don't. But if you order a Coke and they bring you something that tastes a lot like Coke, and they serve it in a Coke glass, and they call it a Coke, and they charge "Coke" rates for it, but it isn't actually something made by the Coca-Cola Company, isn't that a problem? Even if the restaurant once bought a bottle of Coke to analyze for its recipe?

No, it's false in all cases.

The artist who records a cover version of a song owns the copyright in the track--the law refers to it as a "phonorecord." What the artist does not (necessarily) own is the copyright in the underlying musical work.

Phonorecord copyrights are usually referred to as the P-copyright, because the copyright notice in a phonorecord copyright uses the circle-P symbol (℗) (let's see if the forum can render it) instead of the circle-C symbol (©). You can see it if you have an old CD lying around; it will almost always have the circle-P symbol on it somewhere.

For the record, SC does own the P-copyright in about 100 tracks--its original output post mid-2007--that it could sue for infringing, and, as has been mentioned elsewhere, SC has a relationship with Stingray that could, if necessary, be used to sue on the other 18,000 or so tracks in the back catalog. We don't do it because it is harder to prove, and we can accomplish what we need to without it. However, that is ALWAYS subject to change, and if it turns out that people are distributing "stripped" tracks that use SC's sound recordings, we will develop the tools necessary to go after them.

Have you found any of them? I'd be interested in how they turned up anywhere other than in my possession. Why would I share my homemade tracks with everyone else? I like being able to sing songs that no one else sings. If I shared them, they would no longer be exclusive to me. It is interesting how Jimmy never tries to say that my assertions aren't valid when it comes to tracks that have no Sound Choice logo or Sound Choice Trade Dress. He tends to just ignore them because he knows that what I'm saying is true.

And once again, an effort is made to create some fear. Sound Choice's top notch investigators couldn't even get the right information to file a successful law suit when all they needed was a visual sighting of a Sound Choice logo. Now these investigators are going to be trained sound engineers who can tell the difference between a Sound Choice Audio track and let's say; a Chartbuster Audio track of the same song? Yeah Okay. That's likely. If that was the case, Sound Choice wouldn't be only filing law suits for the use of their logo. They would be going for damages based on the illegal use of the P-circle rights too. They make every effort to make their audio tracks sound as close to the original as they can so they are not creating derivitive works. they are not creating parodies with different lyrics than the original so they don't have any right to the lyrics either. My homemade tracks are for my own personal use. I go to some shows that refuse to play anything with a Sound Choice logo so I bring tracks that don't display any logos at all. The KJs don't seem to have a problem playing these songs at all. They are not afraid of me. They are afraid of being targeted by a company that is in the death throws of it's existence and grabbing at any legal straw in an effort to stay afloat. From everything that I have been reading lately; they are failing miserably. It won't be too long now.

Did anyone catch the first line in that long speech by Jim?
Does anyone here care that he just called almost everyone if not everyone here a pirate?

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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

and that is why Sound Choice throws out such a wide net. they don't believe that there are any honest KJs out there so if an innocent DOLPHIN gets caught up in their TUNA net every now and then; they couldn't care less. They just try to apologize for the mistake and move on with no regard to how much they may have tarnished the DOLPHINS reputation with his venues.

You are SOOOOO full of it, I am surprised you aren't choking, and spitting out pieces of poop!!! I am tired of hearing t]about all this piracy nonsense. Yes, I have shifted every brand but yours. I have paid for every single song I own. I do not have an unending list of music, but I BUY new music EVERY week. I have PROOF of that!! I AM the average KJ, now-a-days, in the Post SC era!!! I refuse to be labelled as a pirate by YOU or anyone else!!

Sound Choice is DONE!! They can't compete in the market anymore. They gave that up in 2009. I will tell you this, Zoom Karaoke is putting out music that is better than Sound Choice ever was, with closer representations of the songs they record. As a matter of fact, I am buying Zoom on a regular basis to REPLACE many of my old favorite SC songs, so I won't need to use ANY discs, not to mention that the versions I am buying, are better.

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I am the ONLY SANE 1 HERE

Then stay out of the Karaoke Legalities & Piracy, etc... forum.

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-- Mark

Not the average Host, but some of your the AVERAGE PIRATES are making copies of their HDs and selling them off to other (new) average pirates. And then there's just your HD sellers who are selling the HD with SC product on it, and unsuspecting newbies are buying them, all the while thinking they just got a great deal on a whole new complete Karaoke Library.