Karaoke Forums

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/nfl ... ansspreu11

Federal authorities and the National Football League have seized $19.5 million worth of fake sports memorabilia as part of a year-long crackdown on counterfeit goods, they said on Thursday.

Authorities said over 325,000 counterfeit items, including jerseys, hats and Super Bowl-related merchandise, were seized in an operation that began after last year's Super Bowl and focused on international shipments of counterfeit goods entering the United States.

"Counterfeiting is not a game," said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana. "It is most certainly not a victimless crime either.

"Whether it's the child in Southeast Asia working in deplorable conditions, or local stores going out of business, intellectual property theft is a very real crime with very real victims."

Most of the knockoffs were manufactured in China and were brought to the United States through usual smuggling networks, according to authorities involved in 'Operation Team Player.'

Last year, authorities said 202,000 pieces of counterfeit league merchandise, valued at more than $21.6 million, were seized in the lead-up to the NFL's title game in New Jersey.

Funny....

I can point them to a hard drive seller with 500,000 counterfeit items on a single drive.
IP Theft may be a real crime with real victims, but they are very selective about how bad the crime is and how victimized someone may be.

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-Chris

your talking apples and oranges here.

first the international sellers are making millions in sales, and joe blow on ebay or craigslist is not making anything near that. so why would the GOV. go after someone
not making enough money to cover what it cost to go after someone.

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It's all good!

The crime is the same though regardless of the $ amount involved. That is somewhat the point I was trying to make. If someone were raking in millions selling hard drives, they would be on radar. Otherwise, it is still intellectual property theft.

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-Chris

it,s all about the money...

still if there is no money to be recovered to pay for the cost of fighting it, then they are not going to waste their time in trying to squeeze a dried up prune!

sad to say it is all about the money in the good old US of A.

and it's the same for sound choice!
haven't you noticed they only police major metropolitan areas, they are not even going
to waste their time and effort for a small town with 3 or 4 bars in it. and they have
shown that several times when they go in naming multiple businesses with their lawsuits.

kind of like when they hit the I5 corridor starting in Washington and went down south.

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It's all good!

The reality is that you pretty much disproved your own statement within the same sentence. Because $$$ is THE main driving force behind essentially all efforts on a day-to-day basis, one crime to the next is NOT the same, on that factor alone...adversely, other related crimes that do not directly affect your business are NOT the same, to any given person. Relativity IS a factor in determining wrongness, when looking at the big picture. Heck, even the Bible talks about there being different degrees of punishment in hell...

That and states that take a dim view of frivolous lawsuits like Texas does. Dallas has the 4th largest population in the country, Houston is #6 and San Antonio is #7, and you can believe there is lots of Karaoke here in TX. But do you see lawsuits in Texas. Nope not a 1

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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

That's because everyone is "packin" there, and I wouldn't want to ask the question "Show me that you own ALL of your music"

you are absolutely right, in the immortal words of Hank Williams Jr.
"I got a shotgun rifle and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
Because you can't starve us out
And you can't makes us run
'Cause one-of-'em old boys raised on shotgun"

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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 did see a video that had Kurt talking about the subject and at one point he mentioned that they haven't pursued Philadelphia based on the fact that there were still sales in the area. Based on that statement it leads me to believe that is part of what is being used to gauge looking into the area. I understand the logic, sales in the region, probably legit. One local venue doesn't pay more than 75 bucks. With the investment I have in music, I won't pack my van for 75 bucks yet alone run a show and unpack it. They still find droves of hosts willing to fill that spot. I'm pretty sure if they paid $35,000 dollars for THEIR music, they wouldn't do the gig either but then again, you never know. We have the same issues here though, a heavily devalued industry.

I have turned in several karaoke places in Oregon that are off the I-5 corridor, and none of them have been summoned that I'm aware of.

unfortunately that is not uncommon. i don't believe there is anybody here that have seen anybody they reported taken to court.

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

The sad reality is that the entire process is a joke. I was sitting at lunch with someone recently and he was talking about another store that was sued by SC. and what a JOKE it was. That if SC could not stop a retailer that sold more SC loaded on drives than sound choice even produced, then what's the point anymore! He may have been joking about the retailer being able to get away with all of it, yet it was very real showing that it is very sad.

A karaoke manufacturer once said: That they contacted the FBI here and they expressed to them that they could not do anything
because it basically is not worth the resources. They will ONLY go after someone they can take something from. IMO, they will NOT go after the crime itself for the most part. Example; If a homeless man sold 1 BILLION dollars worth of pirated karaoke and a mother sold 3 pirated songs illegally and owns a home, car, bank acct. etc. Who are they going to attack first? The MOTHER! Of course an extreme comparison. But it gives you an idea.

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MADPROAUDIO ~ DISABLED VETERAN ~ FAMILY OWNED COMPANY

SC doesn't care at all about HD sellers now. Now, the sellers are SC's best friend.

If you can't beat them.....

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-Chris

Trust me guys. As a retailer, I have suffered tremendously from the other sellers peddling all this BS. I even remember a customer I know that owns a publishing company even tell me the same thing. If you can't beat them..... It's really sad, yet I would rather
have my ship sink than to join what I feel has hurt us. I refuse to hurt the next person and that's what it comes down to.

To get phone calls all the time with consumers having trouble understanding why we CAN'T. NOR WILL give them a loaded drive
like others are doing. The most infamous broken record heard over and over again is about another seller that is going to give them
over 18,000 karaoke songs, and over 35,000 dj songs on a laptop for the low low low price of $2,999.99 for the laptop, etc. music.
The customer does not understand why we have a laptop, 9,000+ karaoke songs (subscription, NOT to own), NO DJ music, for around
$1,700-2k. because they are continually bombarded with much more from others.

& the sellers seem to adapt to the game each time. Because the latest thing I have heard out there is a seller telling the customer that they pay monthly fee's on the ALL that music they provide on the laptop for the customer to KEEP! WTF, REALLY?? I thought anyone paying a monthly fee is a SUBSCRIPTION. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

So how is it that a seller can give a hard drive to a consumer with over 50,000 songs to keep forever while the seller claims they
pay a monthly fee to music providers to be able to simply give it away like that. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, someone correct me, educate me. Help me to understand what is going on here because if this exist. Why are we as a retailer living in the dark ages, why are we complete idiots and can't provide this?

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MADPROAUDIO ~ DISABLED VETERAN ~ FAMILY OWNED COMPANY

they are paying guys like KJBILL who sends them the new music he steals for a monthly fee. not legit places. it would be like you getting a monthly fee from every person you sell a laptop to, then every month unwrap each new disc, rip it, then send it out to those people every month online. then you just simply re-wrap the disc and continue to collect the money from something that is already paid for once.

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