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(AKA)
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**Karaoke Piracy News**
What's
Happening with Karaoke
This page is here to discuss the
current issues going on in the world of Karaoke. To put it mildly,
Karaoke and the Karaoke Scene is a mess right now for publishers, disc
manufacturers, karaoke hosts and karaoke companies. This has brought forth
a need for all of us to join together and move forward positively to better our
industry.
Music Industry copyright decisions backing legal claims to
copyright protection:
10-5-2010 - FBI serves warrants, takes a bite out of
Karaoke Piracy!
7-20-09
Phoenix, AZ Takes
Center Stage in Karaoke Piracy Battle:
7-14-09
Blogger sentenced for leaking Guns N' Roses album
- click to go to article below
6-18-09
Thomas verdict: willful infringement, $1.92 million
penalty -
click to go to article below
News Release 6-1-09:
US Karaoke Alliance and Sound Choice work to Combat Piracy
FBI serves
warrants - Karaoke Piracy takes a big hit from the good guys!
Karaoke Piracy has taken a big hit from the good guys. One of the most
prolific pirates of Karaoke music tracks has been
DanSterns@aol.com.
We now know that he is Major League Baseball’s failed prospect, Bill Bene
of California.
His home has been raided, his records from his AOL account have been turned over
and he is awaiting charges to be filed by the FBI and LA prosecutors. The
sting operation has gone on for nearly 4 years. Fines for copyright
violations can be anywhere from $750 on the lowest stated amount up to $150,000
for each incident of willful infringement; Trademark Violations can range from
$200,000 to $2 million per incident.
Evidence collected shows Bene has sold around 1800 hard drives for a total of
$650,000 in sales with over 120,000 copyrighted karaoke tracks on each drive in
addition to another 80,000 mp3 music tracks and video tracks. If the
judges threw the book at him as far as fines it would be 1800 drives X 200,000
track X a MINIMUM of $750. It seems highly unlikely that the judge when it
gets to that point will access 270 billion dollars in fines, but that is what it
adds up to just for the copyright infringement. Trademark Violations could
add in as much as $4 million per karaoke manufacturer on the drive (there
are about 40 to 50 disc manufacturers on each drive)
Information listed in a federal search warrant, provided by Special Agent Bryan
Willet of the FBI, explains that Bene sold drives to two separate C-I’s
(confidential informants), which was captured on hidden camera. He also
sold drives to individuals working for the two named victims in the case, Sound
Choice Karaoke and Stellar Records (Pop Hits Monthly). The FBI has copies
of every PayPal Transaction plus every email conversation with every buyer from
AOL. As far as other records, PayPal, AOL, all banks that Bene used for
moving the money and the IRS, have provided copies of all records to the FBI.
Records show $600,000 in transactions since January of 2006 and $650,000 total
via the PayPal accounts. According to the warrant, Bene never reported any
of the $650,000 as income therefore never payed taxes on any of the proceeds.
The FBI also has mailing packages and labels complete with forensic analysis and
fingerprints linking them back to Bene, proving he used the US Postal Service in
the process of his alleged illegal activities. They also have confiscated
equipment for hard drive duplication, computer systems, and have financial
records showing purchase of all these items.
The warrant is posted at
http://www.USKaraokeAlliance.com/KaraokePiracyWarrant.pdf
for anyone wishing to enjoy some interesting reading.
Now that I have given you the straight forward
listing of facts on this I would like to editorialize on it just a bit!
This is entirely based on my opinions and no one else’s. I do speak to the
key people at Sound Choice, Stellar, and Chartbuster on a regular basis, but I
do not speak for them in any way.
There have been postings on
sites such as ourdjtalk.com that Sound Choice is once again beating the good
guys into submission.
THEY ARE NOT!
How would you feel if someone stole your life’s work and got rich
(if $650,000 in unreported income is not rich – how about well off?), selling
it for a fraction of its value. This continues to the point that your
life’s work is no longer valuable since the market is flooded with nearly free
copies. Sound Choice had about 18,000 tracks on every one of those hard
drives. At about $1.25 per song retail that means that 1800 hard drives
were sold (by one person) meaning 1800 X 18,000 tracks X $1.25 per song = $40.5
million dollars in LOST sales (had those people paid for all of that music).
Alarmingly, that is from only one seller and most of those buyers have
duplicated the drive into oblivion. Many of the buyers continue reselling them
as their own illegitimate business. There are probably easily 10,000 of
these drives in circulation.
We also need to put this in the
perspective of a KJ trying to stay legal and operate with music that has been
paid for. This means those of us who have paid in excess of $100,000 for
music are being obliterated by hosts who have made no investment whatsoever.
These illegitimate hosts can afford to do shows for little or no cost.
Meanwhile, all the legitimate Karaoke disc manufacturers are going out of
business so all we can get is lower quality karaoke tracks from companies that
are probably not licensing the songs properly. How dare anyone in this
industry point fingers at the legitimate karaoke disc companies for trying to
stop this in any way possible!
Now, for a bit of a warning to every one
who bought a drive illegally (no discs for each song on the drive) and are using
that drive or a copy of it to run karaoke shows. First thing that you need
to know is that Stellar is also deeply involved in this FBI case and Chartbuster
is getting actively involved with legal actions. They both have seen the
legal course of action make a large dent in the piracy. You will no longer
be able to dump Sound Choice and continue running shows with other Karaoke
music.
Most of the drives on the market were bought from Bene
(aka
DanSterns@aol.com)
or someone he sold the drive to, who then duplicated them and started their own
resale business. If you are running a karaoke hosting business on one of those
drives, then I personally hope you continue doing this. The FBI will be
turning over all of the names, addresses and contact info for every one of those
sales. Sound Choice, Stellar, and possibly Chartbuster (all of this is
pure speculation on my part) will probably now have great information to try to
find you. As people using illegal hard drives or selling them are found,
the manufacturers will file lawsuits against them. They may bargain with
the pirates and settle for less in exchange for the list and contact information
of all of their sales. This process over time will divulge most of
the illegal drives out there and get all of those companies sued. If you
would like to avoid this, it might be a great time to retire your karaoke
business and actually do something that you have legal rights to do. This
is just a thought for you, if you are not doing business legally! I think
it leaves you 2 choices, get out of the business if you are not legal or start
buying music so you have a disc for every track you are using. Good Luck
with whichever route you choose!
One last thought and I know I bore people with my math. If those 1800 hard
drives were duplicated numerous times and all of the business on Ebay and
Craigslist with 1000’s of sales were added up I would be amazed if it did not
yield over 20,000 of these drives. Now let’s take ˝ of that to be even
more conservative and say that at $1 per song, 10,000 drives X 120,000 Karaoke
tracks = over 1.2 billion in lost sales. Now, we all know no one would buy
all those tracks, but this is a very conservative estimate as to how many
prospective sales have been lost to pure theft. If this were how you made
your living, would you be upset and be trying to stop it! I will bet that
you would. I personally have been hounding Stellar and Sound Choice for
years to get federal officials involved and I owe them an apology as they
already had them involved and were waiting for this to happen and could not
share that information. Thanks to Stellar and to Sound Choice and I hope
to hear of more actions as all of this unfolds.
By the way, Sound Choice also recently sued the Karaoke Kandy Store (also doing
business as Cheapkaraoke, LightYearMusic
and many named others aliases?) who was one of the major sellers of
illegally loaded CAVS hard drives. We will do another story on that
situation shortly, but, ditto the same math above and future access to buyer
information. Pirates beware!
7-20-09
Phoenix, AZ Takes Center Stage in Karaoke Piracy Battle:
Sound Choice,
a leading manufacturer of karaoke discs and member of
KIAA (Karaoke Industry
Alliance of America) has filed a federal trademark violation lawsuit
against 15 karaoke venues and Karaoke Jockeys (KJ’s) in the Phoenix area.
Alleging use of illegally obtained and unauthorized copies of karaoke content on
hard drives, Sound Choice is asking for a jury trial to determine damages for
lost revenues, “statutory
damages per trademark infringed by counterfeiting”, and all profits realized by
the defendants as a result of their
unfair business advantage from counterfeiting of the trademarks. Intellectual
Property lawsuits have been prominent in recent news with the
RIAA winning a nearly 2 million dollar verdict
for willful infringement and a Blogger being sentenced to a year’s probation
after leaking a Guns N’ Roses album to the internet.
Local Phoenix establishments and companies listed as defendants in
the suit include karaoke hosting companies; Dennis Gorrel d/b/a Big D
Productions, Abraham Cortez d/b/a Carousel Karaoke and DJ Company, Dan Dan the
Taxi Man (actual identity unnamed), William Ludlow II d/b/a Dirty Goat
Productions, Greg Kimble d/b/a Dynamic Sound Production, Debbie Simmons d/b/a
Karaoke Fever, Trey’s BadAss Karaoke (actual identity unnamed), Ernest
McCullar d/b/a Wired for Sound, and restaurant – bar establishments; Boston’s
Bar and Grill located in Tempe, the Breakroom located in Phoenix, the
Grapevine located in Scottsdale, Hazelwoods First Place Sports Grill located in
Phoenix, Hurricane Bay Nightclub located in Phoenix, Lighthouse Sports Bar
located in Avondale, the Regal Beagle Sports located in Chandler.
Representatives of Sound Choice with assistance of
United States
Karaoke Alliance (USKA) members conducted investigations and amassed
evidence in the months preceding the lawsuit being filed.
Sound Choice is a leader in the karaoke community and has invested
nearly 20 million dollars in their karaoke music catalog. In the mid 90’s Sound
Choice routinely put out up to 5 new Karaoke discs per month and employed 75
people. With the actions of those pirating their music, they now employ less
than 10 people and their last disc release sold under 800 copies, yet can be
found on thousands of karaoke systems across the United States. As stated in
their suit, “Sound Choice has been forced to undertake this litigation in order
to ensure that it survives and continues to produce the high-quality karaoke
music its fans demand, and to level the playing field for the legitimate KJs.”
US Karaoke Alliance President, Eric Godfrey,
stated, “As legitimate KJ’s, we support Sound Choice’s endeavors. Due to piracy
we can no longer get a fair price for our services as a substantial majority of
karaoke jocks are using illegal content. Almost every disc that comes out is
now being shared on the internet or sold on hard drives. As a result of this
piracy, all legitimate karaoke disc manufacturers already have or are in danger
of going out of business”.
Bobby Brooks, Vice-President of the USKA added, “While KJ’s buying
music legally have spent tens of thousands of dollars, KJ’s using pirated
content have no cost and therefore have offered services for much lower fees,
driving down the actual fair market cost for KJ services”.
Sound Choice with several other record labels, including, Stellar
(Pop Hits Monthly – Sing It Now), Pocket Songs, All-Star and Chartbuster;
started the KIAA along with Karaoke resellers and several KJ’s from around the
country. These other KIAA members are watching Phoenix as the test case for
legal action. Asked what the future holds, Kurt Slep, CEO of Sound Choice,
responded, “We hope to set a precedent in Phoenix. We have already finished
investigations in several other markets and those actions will follow in time.”
News Release 6-1-09:
US Karaoke Alliance and Sound Choice work to Combat Piracy
The US Karaoke Alliance is teaming with Sound Choice, one of America’ premier
karaoke disc manufacturers, to take a bite out of piracy of karaoke music.
Kurt Slep, CEO of Sound Choice, recently visited the Phoenix, AZ metro area and
with the assistance of Eric Godfrey, President of the US Karaoke Alliance, Alan
Malarkey, owner of AAA Entertainment and Bobby Brooks, owner of UR
Entertainment, he visited 10 local bars and night clubs to investigate reports
of illegal karaoke content being used. Based on the visits 8 of those 10
establishments and have been sent letters explaining how to determine if a KJ
might be using illegal content and how this might adversely affect their
businesses. KJ’s have been contacted directly via letters and given a period of
time to respond and correct the copyright and/or trademark violations they might
have before getting the bar involved an escalating into a legal matter. Clubs
visited were in Phoenix, Scottsdale, & Chandler, AZ.
With the growth in new computer
technology, piracy of copyrighted materials has reached epidemic proportions.
TV shows like American Idol have made Karaoke more popular than ever, yet sales
of Karaoke music are less than 10% of previous levels due to illegal
downloading, sale of illegally loaded hard drives and duplication of single
discs to multiple computer systems. Kurt Slep of Sound Choice stated, “There
are actually very few legal karaoke download sites. Most of the sites out there
are not properly licensing and paying copyright fees on the music they are
selling.”
These download sites are only the
tip of the iceberg for piracy problems in Karaoke. Individuals like Dan Sterns
have placed illegal hard drives all over the internet selling collections of
Karaoke Music that would legitimately cost over $100,000 for sale for under
$500.
Eric Godfrey, president of the US
Karaoke Alliance (www.uskaraokealliance.com
) and advisory board member of KIAA (Karaoke Industry Alliance of America –
www.thekiaa.org) stated “Common sense should dictate
to someone that if it is too good to be true, it is not legal. If you are
buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of music for a few hundred dollars and
no manufacturer original merchandise, it has got to be illegal”. Godfrey
estimates somewhere between 80 and 90% of all karaoke companies using
computerized systems are using some degree of illegal content.
This has created a huge problem for legal karaoke hosts as the companies who
paid nothing for their music are offering to do shows for extremely low fees
since they have no investment. This creates an unfair business advantage and
has taken away from the value of legal hosts and created a situation where too
many venues have karaoke, thus adversely affecting the value of karaoke shows to
venues.
Karaoke disc manufacturers put
karaoke music out on CD+G’s, which are CD’s that contain a graphic track that
can display the lyrics on a screen. A few of the karaoke disc manufacturer’s
have negotiated for rights and are now releasing their songs directly into MP3+G
formats that can be used on a PC. Karaoke disc manufacturer’s have previously
licensed tracks via CD+G units and can not authorize end users to covert these
into other formats. Realizing that users are gong to do this, most of the disc
manufacturers have acknowledged that they are not seeking actions against
companies who bought originals and converted it unless they did so and made
multiple copies for use across several systems. These manufacturers working
with KJ’s and distributors started KIAA (Karaoke Industry Alliance of America)
to educate KJ’s and karaoke establishments and enthusiasts that anyone using
karaoke content that has not purchased an original disc is violating copyright
and trademarks of the disc manufacturers, publishers and the artists whose
content is being displayed.
Tips
to a venue that a KJ or Karaoke company might have illegal content.
You are within your rights to
discuss this issue with your KJ and to ask for their assurance that they are
running a legal karaoke show. Below is a list of some things to look out for.
Note that the presence of these factors does not necessarily mean a karaoke show
is running pirated content, but these are fairly universal indications that
should raise your awareness and cause you to question your host about the
karaoke music they are using in their show.
- Running a karaoke show using
a computer, CAVS machine, or other device with more than 20,000 karaoke tracks
[the huge monetary investment necessary to put together a collection of
karaoke tracks larger than this makes it likely that at least some of the
library has been acquired illegally, unless the host has been in business many
years.
- Running multiple
simultaneous shows in different establishments on the same night. [this
can indicate that the hard drives could have been copied between machines].
- Songs that have the
introductory branded trademark screen removed [this shows an attempt to
hide the manufacturer of the song which is an obvious willful infringement.
- Charging low prices for a
show [while price competition between KJs is common, if a KJ has stolen
content then their investment in their business is very low, so they usually
charge less than an operator with a fully paid for library.
July 14, 2009, 3:51 PM EST
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A federal judge has sentenced a man
who pleaded guilty to leaking part of the
Guns N'
Roses album "Chinese Democracy" to a year's probation.
Blogger Kevin Cogill will also serve two months of home
confinement, subject his computers to government scrutiny, and record a public
service announcement for the Industry Association of America.
Cogill pleaded guilty earlier this year to one
misdemeanor count of copyright infringement for posting nine tracks from the
long-awaited Guns 'N Roses album last year.
He said in court Tuesday that he posted the tracks to
promote the band, not hurt it.
A federal prosecutor had asked a judge to sentence Cogill
to some prison time, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Abrams said he felt Cogill
had learned his lesson.
Original article location:
A new lawyer, a new jury, and a new trial were not enough to save Jammie
Thomas-Rasset. In a repeat of the verdict from her first federal trial,
Thomas-Rasset was found liable for willfully infringing all 24 copyrights
controlled by the four major record labels at issue in the case. The jury
awarded the labels damages totaling a whopping $1.92 million. As the dollar
amount was read in court, Thomas-Rasset gasped and her eyes widened.
Kiwi Camara, Thomas-Rasset's lead attorney, spoke briefly after the
trial. He told reporters that when he first heard the $80,000 per song damage
award, he was "angry about it" and said he had been convinced that any
liability finding would have been for the minimum amount of $750 per song.
As for Thomas-Rasset, she appeared shaken by the verdict but didn't
blame the jury. "They did their job," she said, "I'm not going to hold it
against them." She added, though, that the recording industry would never
collect the money. "Good luck trying to get it from me... it's like squeezing
blood from a turnip."
The recording industry lawyers, though clearly pleased, had no desire to
showboat this one. The massive damage award, which increased from $9,250 per
song in the first trial to $80,000, might sounds like a "win," but will
probably stoke grassroots anger against the industry's campaign... if the
music business tries to collect. There are hints that it might not.
Spokesperson Cara Duckworth of the RIAA, who attended the trial, told
reporters afterwards, "Since day one we have been willing to settle this
case... and we remain willing to do so." The industry appears to be doing
everything it can not to appear vindictive in these cases, though Duckworth
refused to discuss any details of what a proposed settlement might look like.
Camara acknowledged the settlement offer and said that his side would
certainly investigate it, but he made clear that he intends to file numerous
motions if Thomas-Rasset wants to continue the fight. Motions on the
constitutionality of such massive damages and other issues can still be filed
with the judge, and then there's the entire matter of an appeal.
Thomas-Rasset sounds inclined to fight on. The case was "one for the
RIAA, not the end of the war," she said.
As for Camara, he intends to press ahead with his class-action lawsuit
against the recording industry, in which he will take up the daunting task of
trying to claw back all the money that the recording industry has collected in
the course of its legal campaign to date.
Not good enough
A vigorous defense from Kiwi Camara and Joe Sibley was not enough to
sway the jury, which had only to find that a preponderance of the evidence
pointed to Thomas-Rasset. The evidence clearly pointed to her machine, even
correctly identifying the MAC address of both her cable modem and her
computer's Ethernet port. When combined with the facts about her hard drive
replacement (and her failure to disclose those facts to the investigators),
her "tereastarr" username, and the new theories that she offered yesterday for
the first time in more than three years, jurors clearly remained unconvinced
by her protestations of innocence.
Camara suspects that the jury thought Thomas-Rasset was a liar and were
"angry about it," thus leading to the $80,000 per-song damages.
The case is a reminder that in civil trials, simply raising some doubt
about liability is not enough; lawyers need to raise lots of doubt to
win the case, and Camara and Sibley were unable to do so here.
The jury found Thomas-Rasset's conduct to be willful, which means that
statutory damages under the Copyright Act can range from $750 per infringement
up to $150,000. In his closing statement, defense lawyer Joe Sibley made clear
that even the minimum award would run $18,000 (24 songs x $750 = $18,000), an
amount that he said was unfair and crippling to Thomas-Rasset. The jury
decided that the per-song penalty would be $80,000, for a total damage award
of $1.92 million, over $1.7 million more than the award in her first trial.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our President Eric Godfrey, has been invited and has accepted a position on the
newly formed group, the
KIAA,
Karaoke Industry Alliance of America.
Rather than mis-state anything in regards to the KIAA we will reference their
mission statement:
Mission
Statement of the KIAA
The
Karaoke Industry Alliance of America is a non-profit trade
organization made up of manufacturers, distributors, KJ/DJ
hosts, venue owners and karaoke enthusiasts. Our mission is
to promote and advance all aspects of karaoke be it as an
art form, a form of entertainment, a recreational activity
or even as just a casual pastime.
In pursuit of our mission, our primary
goal is to foster a favorable business climate that equally
supports and promotes the interests of all its members.
Through its members, the KIAA endeavors to set a high
standard of operation by asserting that its membership
adhere to both legal and highly ethical business practices.
We are
participating on their board in an effort to make sure that
the needs, rights and desires of KJ's are heard and are
dealt with in a fair manner. We entirely support all
that KIAA is trying to do and will work with them in any way
we can to help further both our causes.
We recently sent
a press release which will be published in Mobile Beat and
the National Entertainer (NAME's Magazine). The
article talks about our goals and our plans and then our
hopes in what we can accomplish in working with KIAA.
The article in no way reflects opinions or positions of
KIAA, but does reflect our viewpoints and our goals moving
forward:
US Karaoke
Alliance formed to assist Karaoke Hosts and energize the
industry.
US Karaoke
Alliance (www.uskaraokealliance.com)
is working to help better the world of KJ’s and rejuvenate
the industry. We mentioned a few issues ago that Sound
Choice has agreed not to pursue legal actions for use of
digital karaoke systems as long as companies can provide
proof of one for one copies of content versus number of
shows being run simultaneously. This is a huge development
in the Karaoke world and a true offering of an olive branch
to KJ’s.
As President
of the US Karaoke Alliance, I am speaking to KIAA (Karaoke
Industry Alliance of America) and serving on their advisory
board to create an infrastructure and alliance for Karaoke
professionals. The goal of the US Karaoke Alliance is to
help the KJ’s that are doing business legitimately and the
ones that are trying to do things the right way so they can
make more money for their shows, better run their businesses
and through KIAA have a way to report companies that are
breaking the law. In the past, single companies tried
running “regulatory” types of associations. These
associations were not truly successful due to a lack of any
consolidated enforcement efforts. The US Karaoke Alliance
hopes are that with KJ’s, retailers, enthusiasts and all of
the major disc manufacturers putting together efforts with
KIAA, we can actually have some real enforcement actions and
get rid of those who have no desire to do business ethically
and legally. Our goal is that in the long run as we build
membership and a steadily growing organization that we will
have enough impact to either get consolidated agreements
from publishers or get some sort of legislation that will
define licensing of karaoke tracks once and for all.
Karaoke
Legal History 101:
Karaoke is currently not ever mentioned in the US Copyright
Law or in the Digital Millennium Act. This has lead to
widespread disagreements.
The Copyright Act defines “phonorecords” as “material
objects in which sounds, other than those accompanying a
motion picture or other audiovisual work, are fixed by any
method now known or later developed, and from which the
sounds can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise
communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine
or device.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. “Audiovisual works” are defined
as “works that consist of a series of related images which
are intrinsically intended to be shown by the use of
machines, or devices such as projectors, viewers, or
electronic equipment, together with accompanying sounds, if
any….”
When karaoke moved from cassettes with written lyric sheets
to CD’s containing some pictures and graphic words scrolling
on a screen and synced to the music, this opened up the
disagreement and the ability for the publishers to negotiate
sync licenses at a negotiated rate per contract and the
ability to say “No” to karaoke manufacturers unless they
were willing to pay the fees requested for a negotiated
license the some most refer to as a sync license. The case
that set the precedent for this was
ABKCO Music, Inc. v.
Stellar Records, Inc in 1996, where ABKCO sued on the
grounds that Stellar could not just put out karaoke tracks
with a section 115 compulsory license filing as compulsories
were defined strictly as covering only “phonorecord”
recordings. Under the terms of copyright law, they argued
that the karaoke tracks closer resembled the definition of
“audivisual works” and would require individual negotiated
licenses for each track. The courts ruled in ABKCO’s favor
thus setting the precedent that karaoke track rights must be
individually negotiated for permission and compensation.
In 2005 Rick Priddis of Priddis Music was quoted as saying,
"The great irony in all
of this is that the publishers, while claiming their actions
are trying to root out pirates and willful infringers, are
making sure that only the pirates will survive," Priddis
said. "The true infringers have never paid fees and never
will. If this continues, those of us who have paid fees and
royalties all along will be forced out of business, and then
everybody loses." His company was sued by EMI Publishing
and even though the initial judgment in Utah courts was that
“sync licenses” are not required for karaoke products which
display only the text of lyrics; (U.S. District Judge Bruce
S. Jenkins ruled, because "Absent a series of related visual
images, e.g., a motion picture, film or video recording, the
display of the lyrics represents the display of a 'literary'
rather than 'audiovisual' work.") while the case was on
appeal to a higher court, Priddis dropped out of the
Karaoke business and issued a joint statement with EMI in
2008 acknowledging that sync licenses are required for
Karaoke tracks. Over the years, DK, Pioneer , Music
Maestro, Nutech, Backstage and many other smaller companies
have followed suit and went out of business showing that
Priddis was correct back in 2005. As of now the only major
players remaining active in Karaoke are Sound Choice,
Stellar Records, Chartbuster, and Pocket Songs.
Earlier this
year, the requirement for this negotiated license was upheld
in California’s 9th Circuit Court when they ruled
that in favor of BMI publishing in a lawsuit with karaoke
electronic microphone system creator, Leadsinger.
Leadsinger had filed for relief on the grounds that their
digital chip based system only required compulsories and
reprint licenses for lyrics, but their claim was denied and
then that decision was upheld upon appeal and it was ruled
that since it provided graphics and some images on a screen
attached to their system they could be required to pay sync
licenses. Leadsinger also argued that their use of tracks
fell under “fair use” and that claim was also not found to
have enough merit to overturn the lower court decision.
The issue
still lies in the fact that “audio visual synchronization
licensing” was originally intended to apply to protect
artists from having their works exploited for movies and
commercials and tied to images of popular stars or products
for financial gain. Display of lyrics on a screen is
merely a technological advancement of display on paper and
designed to make karaoke easier for the singer. It is
nothing but a guide to a singer and is not what audio visual
sync licensing was intended, but with lack of any
legislation this has opened an opportunity for publishers to
deny rights to release karaoke tracks and to demand larger
fees and is slowly forcing the legitimate karaoke companies
out of business.
Our hopes are
that if we can create enough of an infrastructure and united
front of karaoke enthusiasts that a new type of compulsory
for Karaoke can be established with the major labels, either
via agreement or via legislation. We must first learn to
work together and self police our industry so that we can
show the publishers that we are worthy of their time and
consideration. When dealing with people that release
multi-million selling recordings, we must provide a system
that is capable of showing them a financial gain in the
future.
While
KIAA is serving to combine the efforts of all industry
components and will work on legal education, music licensing
issues, enforcement and investigation of infringement, The
US Karaoke Alliance will be developing a database driven
website structure that will provide many benefits to karaoke
hosting companies, venues and karaoke enthusiasts while in
the future offering KIAA a single contact point resource to
set up payment plans and a secondary source to audit karaoke
company libraries for compliance.
Member
benefits of the US Karaoke Alliance will include:
- Ability to have a cursory
or in depth audit of karaoke libraries conducted for
certification of companies status. (Companies that are
certified will have this added to their profiles and
their listings will move to a higher point on lists made
available to clubs looking for legal Karaoke hosts.)
- Ability to subscribe to
ongoing monthly karaoke releases from major vendors for
each set of music. (since it is via a private,
membership based program and not open to the general
public, karaoke monthly releases will be below normal
MAP price points.) Those subscribing will also have
this added to their profile and will show higher in
listings on various websites for finding hosts.
- Liability insurance for
business to protect venues and availability of equipment
and music coverage as well.
- Discounted rates on
business management and web-site hosting products via
strategic partners.
- Discounted rates on search
engine listings of Karaoke Bars and hosting company
databases.
- Bi-Monthly newsletter with
updates on industry happenings and special offers from
national karaoke retailers.
- Central contact point for
companies wishing to set up plans and work with major
karaoke disc manufacturers to pay for content and bring
all libraries into 100% with disk manufacturer
policies. (Some older songs can not be licensed any
longer, however manufacturers are currently developing
plans for “covenants not to sue” or agreements to accept
existing digital content and not pursue copyright
infringement suits.)
- New benefits will be added
over time as membership and resources expand
For
more information on any of these organizations or to get
involved go to
www.uskaraokealliance.com.
Let’s all work together to fix the problems that confront
the karaoke industry.
****************************************************************************************************
This new stance has resulted from no cases directly
dealing with format shifting and no legislation that deals with these issues.
Background on using hard drives is derived from the following legal documents.
US Copyright laws (17 U.S.C. §§ 102, 201, 201d)
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA, title 1, and 17
U.S.C. §§ 109, 117).
American Home Recording Act of 1992
****************************************************************************************************
Now let's get back to some facts.
1. The Karaoke industry is being damaged severely by pirating, illegal copies,
illegal downloads etc. I will never disagree with this and you would be
hard pressed to find anyone in the industry who does not agree with this.
2. If you are making copies of an original karaoke disc and selling them...on
hard drives, burnt discs, DVD's, Super CDG's.. whatever format... you are
breaking the law!
3. If you are buying 1 copy of a disc and you are then putting that on a hard
drive or burning multiple copies for use at shows... you are breaking the
law! Anytime you buy 1 copy of a disc and make multiple copies to be used
at simultaneous venues, you are displacing a sale and taking money away from the
manufacturer.
4. Downloading from any shared site without a legal license and payment per song
is a violation of copyright laws. Many file sharing sites have popped up
and are rampant for providing songs at no cost, which displaces a sale. This is
illegal. We have done extensive research including talking to the top
person at Chartbuster, Sound Choice and Stellar. There currently is NO LEGAL
KARAOKE DOWNLOAD SITE ANYWHERE. THE LICENSE DOES NOT EXIST to distribute
content via the internet. One is on it's way by spring or summer of 2009.
But not yet. Buying content on discs and ripping them yourself is not
legally addressed and many KJ's say it falls under fair use, but until it goes
in front of a court and is ruled on it is all gray area!!
5. Buying a hard drive loaded with songs instead of buying through normal
channels (manufacturers) is displacing sales and is illegal.. Once again, no
argument. This takes money away from manufacturers and artists and it
gives companies music with nearly no cost allowing them an unfair competitive
advantage in the market.
6. In all of these areas
we fully support any manufacturer who is trying to keep the industry legal and
fair to all hosting companies, artists, singers, etc.
7. Companies using copied discs or
hard drive based systems or illegally copied or created Super CDG's are not
supporting the manufacturers of the music or the artists and composers.
They have the ability to do Karaoke Bars at extremely low costs as they have
nearly no overhead. This is unfair to companies doing business legally and
hurts the overall Karaoke industry by not returning revenues back to the
companies that are providing all of us with music.
***************************************************************************************************
Karaoke is by it's nature a copied non-artist representation of a song
with graphic lyrics. It needs to be addressed on it's own as none of the
other laws pertain specifically. As of now it is not addressed as it can
be logically asserted that it does not meet the criteria for any of the other
classifications. With Sound Choice joining with other Karaoke
Manufacturers in this new group KIAA, we can all move forward to work on the
real problem, stopping the people using illegal hard drives, illegal file
sharing, copied CDG's that have no originals to back up each copy of their
content.
***************************************************************************************************
We would love to hear your comments on these issues.
If you have a valid point to make please send us an e-mail at
webmaster@USAkaraokealliance.com.
Arizona Karaoke Shows, AZ Karaoke Contests, AZ Karaoke Bars, Clubs,
Listings
Phoenix Arizona - AZ Disc Jockey - DJ, Karaoke &
Entertainment Service Website Links
Contact the AZ Karaoke Alliance - 480-830-1308
info@azkaraokealliance.com
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