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I recently built a new laptop for a new gig that contains ONLY portions of my Sound Choice, Pop Hits Monthly and Chartbuster collection supplemented by legal downloads. I did it to reduce the number of duplicate tracks, to streamline maintenance, and reduce hardware requirements (go to smaller hard drives) for laptops. It will also reduce the size of the books for this location somewhat. All around, the decision will save me a significant amount of time and money.

The side effect of this is that I have eliminated many of the brands that we all know or suspect did not license properly. I feel somewhat good about that, but as was mentioned by TLR, I don't feel any obligation to remove the questionable tracks without a mandate.

There are a great many karaoke hosts out there that don't read karaoke forums and are completely oblivious to licensing issues. They saw discs they wanted, bought them, end of story. There is no way for them to know if the discs are "legal" or not. There is no one regulating them. There is no easy way to figure out what is valid or not. For them, ignorance is bliss and I often wish I were in the same position as them.

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-Chris

You have eliminated duplicates Chris and probably kept SC since you are so sold on their product. Did you also eliminate one of a kind material that can only be had on similar questionable brands? Most hosts if they can only obtain a song on one label will keep that track until like many have said they are asked to eliminate it. Are you also eliminating material and actually losing songs from your library?

I eliminate dups as well and if it's on SC then yes that is my preferred goto - 90% of the time the version is going to be accurate & sound correct but yes I do have versions from other manus that I have listed over SC on a couple dozen that are much better - not very many though. If a song is only available on another brand, then that is the best version and what is listed - no matter manu - that being said if a song is just plain unsingable, then it doesn't get listed at all - no matter the brand (usually Music Maestro is one of the prime culprits with SGB being next in line). SC, CB, SBI/Sunfly, Zoom get listed before any other brand as far as dups go.

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Not sure I can make it more obvious than what I already said.

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-Chris

I would be curious about how you picked and chose "questionable brands ", simply because there aren't - to my knowledge - ANY brands that didn't have licensing problems. Some, like PS and Sybersound, had ALMOST none, but virtually every brand could be considered "questionable " on that basis.

I'm pretty sure your chosen songs were pulled more on "comfort level ".

I'm also dead certain that unless you vetted each and every track, noting licensing for each, you still have some unlicensed tracks in that library just like the rest of us.

No knock to you, Chris. I know you are trying to do what's right. However, as you mentioned above, buying the discs shows use of a mfrs.' product in good faith. It is not now - nor has it ever been - the KJ's legal responsibility to verify mfr. licensing before using the product.

However, I would add the caveat that if one DOESN'T own the DISC -like a download host - one may be open to some problems.

Example: If one downloads from DT, one has no way of proving that any specific track has been paid for- no itemized receipt - meaning one has no way to prove one's track was not downloaded from a torrent site.

Even if downloaded from a site that itemizes receipts the tracks do not come with any .txt file that implies any licensing. A disc - with some rare exceptions - usually has a copyright date or something on the label that at least IMPLIES licensing, which would show good faith on the part of the buyer.

NOTE: I am NOT SAYING that downloads are illegal or bad. I AM saying that they do not provide the amount of protection from liability that a mfrs.' original disc does.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I thought I read somewhere in the past that if you are certified legal by SC and you rip a disc to a HD that you had to rip the whole disc and not only certain songs.

So if you are deleting dupes and they happen to be SC's, are you violating the Certified KJ agreement?

I may be wrong and Jim would know the correct answer, so waiting for it.

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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

As long as he owns the discs each track were ripped from. Meaning it would still need to be a set of discs for that computer - so if he only pulled 1 song from say 8148 - he would still need to prove he owned the 8148 for that system, there is nothing that says he MUST load the entire disc, only that for any track ripped, that a corresponding disc accompany for that one track.
What isn't allow is using half of a disc for one system and the other half for another system or if you have 2 discs that have a couple of repeated songs, you cannot take the duplicate track & use it in another system. Each system requires their own individual disc.

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

Simple - If it wasn't Sound Choice, Pop Hits, Chartbuster, I didn't put it on the drive (I did add Pioneer last night though because I love the videos)

Again.....

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-Chris

Chris, I got that it was a side effect. However, as you have shown, it was a "comfort level " thing and nothing more. Doing so lost you a LOT of tracks for no reason. However, host comfort is important - no biggie.

Lon, your statement regarding half a disc on one system, and half on another makes no sense. Not knocking you, but rather anyone who told you that. No tracks are duped in your example, therefore all individual tracks meet SC' s made up 1:1 requirement. If you are speaking of the publisher/owners, I believe you are covered there too.

Please keep in mind that media shifting has yet to be definitively tested in court. I speak in terms of original mfr. disc only...

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe, It was stated by a credible source, like Harrington or a judge's ruling, that media shifting was not intended to give the shifter an advantage by being able to split their disc.... something that a non-shifter cannot do. I personally feel that is hogwash, but it wouldn't affect me any way since I am not a multi rigger.

Makes no sense to you or not - that is the outline of the audit agreement. It's basically this, say you are running two shows on the same night, same time! You cannot have that 1 disc in both places at once - you would need two discs. Same principle applies. The computer user shouldn't have the advantage over the disc user in that manner simply because they can.

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

Mr. Marog and Lon are both referencing SC, not the law, unless either of you can name a judge or legal document only SC's PREFERENCES are being referenced.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I believe it was set in precedent in Dan Dan the Taxman's case where while he was found compliant to the 1:1, he was also forced by the judge to remove all SC from his library for failure to follow SC's requirement to audit his system.

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

So Danny a host buying the SC product and 1:1 compliant and still cant use his purchased material, because he didn't say mother may I to SC. Then hosts wonder why I have boycotted SC, really? They are the only manu living or dead that put on these silly restrictions. The only way they can license their current unsold inventory is to use this legal process in order to generate sales. Unfortunately this whole little drama will continue to unfold until one of two things happen. Either SC runs out of unsold inventory or they run out of money to continue the legal process. Since both are part of the suits drives sales marketing strategy. I just find it surprising that their reputation has not been more damaged, than it already has.

Once again you have stated the issue incorrectly to fit your agenda. No surprise really.

And BTW, I don't think you can boycott anything. You aren't even a KJ anymore.



Exactly. No "mother may I" needed.

...and you continue to exist only within your own reality bubble.



You statement is patently false. That is not the ONLY way.

I bought TWO GEM sets because I wanted the GEM sets. Not because of any legal arm twisting. I think it is a fair assumption that many other people bought GEM sets just because they wanted it, not because of any legal action as well.



Which raises the question.....why do you continue to make feeble attempts to tarnish their reputation when it is evident that people just don't care what you have to say about SC?

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-Chris

Agreed. The "I'm just a simple retired KJ who dislikes their tactics" line is getting pretty thin. It's obvious you have a very large axe to grind.

Not precisely on point, but there was a ruling in one of the Florida cases (Tampa), after trial that maintaining a central server and streaming karaoke to multiple sites from a single set of discs was an infringement in part because it allows the KJ to split discs between multiple locations. In that case, the KJ had one full set of discs, but he was streaming to three separate locations at one time.

Order in SC v. Johnson

Even though the same song was (supposedly) never played in two locations at the same time, the court held that the arrangement was invalid--aside from the streaming--because it gave the KJ the ability, through media-shifting and streaming, the ability to gain more commercial use from the material than he would have been able to obtain if he used discs alone. (I believe our friend up in Michigan was one of the proponents of the idea that as long as the same song wasn't played in two different places at the same time, it was legal; that ruling shows it is not. I may be wrong about who was advocating for that position, as it has been several years.)

Which, by the way, is one of the key points underlying the media-shifting policy. SC permits media-shifting under its rules as long as it doesn't deprive SC of sales it would otherwise have obtained. Media-shifting is not supposed to allow a KJ to buy less music, just to put that music into a more convenient format.

If this premise is a point of rule, which is not necessarily a point of law, then couldn't there be an allocation for product that can no longer be purchased, which would NOT deprive anyone of sales?

I'm not exactly sure what this is referring to.

Are you referring to situations where a KJ wants to put a second (identical) rig in the field, but can't obtain some of the discs necessary to do so? If that's your question, then the answer is, no. I'm having a hard time differentiating between that and outright piracy.