Karaoke Forums

http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/i-run ... 84872.html

If by chance this is someone from KS, you should contact SC directly and arrange for an audit.

My reply, posted on that site:

"I too run a Karaoke business, and am aware of similar suits being filed by this party and related facts. I would consult with an attorney BEFORE attempting direct contact with your adversary, and most certainly before allowing them to audit, or signing any documents. VERY IMPORTANT: If a document of acknowledgement is presented at an audit for signing, pass it to your attorney.

If a settlement is requested, and you are innocent, let your attorney handle it. I understand your fears, but do NOT allow yourself to be intimidated. Fear will cloud your judgement. An attorney's fee for this situation- if you are innocent- will, in all liklihood be MUCH less than the settlement amount requested, because the time involved will be minimal.

Disclaimer: I am not a trained legal professional, and am merely speaking with some background knowledge of similar situations..."

I also kinda think that if you were posting legal advice for this person, you might mention your association with the KIAA and SC- IMHO

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I'm not an agent of SC or the KIAA. I serve on the board, I have a direct line to SC, but neither of those things has granted me the authority to act or say things on SC or KIAA's behalf. In fact, if I did act in that capacity, chances are I could get sued.

We already had 1 KJ on this board, that was mistakenly identified, did an audit, and walked away unscathed. I could be wrong, I think it was karaokyer, could have been someone else.

Wasnt me toqer. WhileI commend those try to put honest hosts on a level field with pirates do not approve of these methods. I have been in this predicament in other pofessional vocations and with seminars and intense co-operation wih giants such as RCA ZENITH Motorola, Sony and others we put flyby nighters and wannabes out of business. I still hold a first class radio and telephone license. When RCA and others drpped these practices and their tech support went south Sony and others took over the broadcast and other main electronic industries. We replaced 2 television transmitters (RCA) with NEC out of Japan.

THe manus have an obligation to the professionals using and buying their products to provide support, incentives and provide marketing schemes that the public wants. SC. CB and others faled us miserably we didnt cause their problems. I would hope that this decade wll be free of finger pointing and devising solutions not passing more insane laws or lawsuits. We could blame it all on Bush I guess.

Las and foremost at one time when technology changed TV repair, I was stuck with thousands of dollars in tubes and tv modules. I had to count my losses and move on to another decade. The music industry is at a crossroads and in this decade will change radically. It is rediculous how greedy and corrupt it is. My CD"S as far as I am concerned are becoming more and more worhless.

Due o many other factors Iwll not be doing karaoke as mainline or maybe not even in public. This has nothing to do with SC orothers. I has to withASCAP fees and venues economic problems.Public karaoke is not as profitable as it once was and I look for it to wane even more. It saddens me because it was a good ride.

The only salvation wll be a general cessation of finger poining and trying to blame someone and promoting karaoke the way it should been to start with. We need viable solutions not crackpot theories that are not based upon age old ways that work. In the words of an old Apache chief. I Walk Away.....

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Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

I feel your pain karyoker. Granted SC's methods may not be the best, but having seen the futility of going through law enforcement channels myself to get pirates shut down, it's the only way they can do it.

My family is heavily involved in politics in San Jose. My cousin is a county supervisor, and before that vice mayor. His father was a State assemblyman for over 20 years. Despite having them ask the local police to do something about the "Grand Theft" and "Receiving stolen property" my competitors have committed, it made no bearing on anything.

This was in spite of me having overwhelming evidence against them. One of my customers had CDG's burned by my competitors.

I'm sure SC is open to suggestions if you have them. I know they and the rest of the KIAA members tried approaching the FBI to no avail.

With the world situation as it is the FBI is under the gun more than they ever have been. They dont just go around busting small fry on suspicion, they spend thousands of dollars and months on each case before going public with an arrest or a summons from a grand jury. They are not the answer either.

I spent about 5 years working for High Country Games here in Fort Collins serving all the amusement machines including Valley dart boards. I still have a rep of providing an honest better than average sevice in any profession. This rep was not obtained in a few years it was over an extended period. That is how compete wih wannabes and flybynighters or pirates. They do not give me competition. Bars that hire them over a reputable host regret it when the crowds dwindle. Non singing customers here must be more savvy than most becauwe they support professionals. That Sir is how you fight pirates and those that want to cut corners.

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Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

Being good will only take you so far. Cheaper drinks than the venue you work at and 100's of 1000's of songs to choose from will make folks stray quickly.

Used to be only 7 or 8 karaoke shows in my area. Now there's 56. 25 of them all run by the same pirating crew. If economics have taught us anything, the cheaply produced goods at a cheap price eventually win out over name brand and quality.

You and I might have a name brand with quality, but equate the deluge of piracy to chinese manufacturers. Eventually we'll have to compete on their price or get out of the business.

Article from the local newspaper on this suit . . .

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/busin ... 08/316401/

Note: the 14,000 disc count quoted in the picture caption is NOT a misprint.

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Dave's not here.

That would be because he is a retailer from what the article says.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

The Times-Disgrace isn't noted for it's precise language usage any more. Instead of:

Nick Fisher, owner of Karaoke One, a Mechanicsville-based supplier of karaoke jockeys

It would have been more accurate to say, "a Mechanicsville-based entertainment company that specializes in karaoke."

He's not a retailer. He has put a lot of time, effort and money into building his company over the past 10-15 years.

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Dave's not here.

14,000 discs is amazing, I'm sure that guy is proud of his collection and wouldn't have any problem showing it off. I'm not going to disagree, there's going to be some false positives. Maybe more than we'd like. I'm trying to get Kurt and crew to do a few things that might help negate this.

1. Investigations are made by KJ's. Nothing wrong with that, but there's really not a criteria by which they follow. (at least I haven't been given one) Some example criteria in addition to "How many songs X venues" I think we need are...

a. What are the condition of the ripped CDG? To me, perfect graphics are suspect where glitched graphics indicate the person probably performed the ripping themselves.
b. What do the singers know? Singers are usually the #1 source of information you can get. The pirates in my area have burned CDG's for singers, and the singers were more than happy to tell me that.
c. Are there extremely rare sets in the book? SC8125 for example? DK?
d. If anyone has any other criteria, they should list them below.

2. No less than 2 investigators per venue. In accounting this is the double entry method and it's proven to cut down on mistakes. Where one investigator may truly have it in for the competition, the other might not.

a. Investigators must be unanimous before proceeding with legal action
b. Investigators must share information and notes. I'm trying to get them to start a forum site for us to do this.


It's not a whole lot, but it's common sense things that we could be doing that we're just not right now.

Again, I hope people don't get to ticked off at SC. The piracy problem is HUGE right now, and they seem to be the only manufacturer trying to do something about it.

"a. What are the condition of the ripped CDG? To me, perfect graphics are suspect where glitched graphics indicate the person probably performed the ripping themselves."

I like your suggestions, but this one can be a big false positive. I rip all of my discs, and I recently found only one glitched graphic out of at least 100 tracks over the last month. And I always re-rip songs that have glitched graphics, to ensure it's perfect.

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Wam bam thank you m'am.

Investigators should be professional, experienced, and licenced. This avoids amatuer mistakes and assumptions.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

rogerniner: I'm just suggesting it as one of many criteria. I have DK CDG's that were in use for 10 years before we ripped them, no amount of resurfacing ever gave us perfect rips.

Timberlea: an investigator doesn't always need to be licensed, depending on the nature of the case. Case in point, HBO's Death on a Factory Farm.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/deathf ... index.html

The investigator Pete wasn't licensed by any state. Experienced, yes. Professional, very much when he took the stand.

He would pose as a laborer, go to work for these farms and collect evidence. He was given a criteria of things to look for and dutifully did his job until enough evidence meeting the criteria was found.

That's the whole problem I see right now with the karaoke investigations. There is no criteria, there's no sharing of information between investigators, nada. That needs to change.

Well yes I forgot about television investigators because it's soooo real. Dog the Bounty Hunter is my Hero.....NOT.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

Have you seen Death on a Factory farm Tim? It's nothing like Dog the bounty hunter. Pete is trying to stay incognito the entire time, whereas dog is doing it for the fame.

I'll agree though, I think dog is a total douche, I don't watch that show either.

How about the obvious????

When investigating a KJ who is PC operated, how many shows does he have in the week? Is he a 1-KJ operation, or does he have several KJs working for/with him at multiple locations on the same night.... possible Red Flag

I have to agree with rogerniner on this one. I check all my rips and rerip if they show sighs of distortion or glitches.
I think that if you have glitched graphics this could be a sign of a pirate as the original ripper didn't care what the results were he just wanted to get it uploaded to the net thus anyone d/l them could get bad copies due to the original ripper doing a shoddy job or a glitch in the net giving the d/ler a bad copy.

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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

Here's another question that just crossed my mind.

DoWoop.com rents karaoke discs. Is this legal, seems like they have been doing it a long time. So lets say you rent an obscure disc from them and some investigator sees you playing a song from it and you get served, in the mean time you have returned the disc to Do Woop and no longer have it and didn't bother keeping any receipts from your rental! NOW WHAT. I guess you could always go back to Do Woop and try to get them to give you a receipt then again they might not want to get caught up in any lawsuits, and yes they do rent Sound Choice

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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

You can have SC contact dowoop and verify that you rented it.

Last thing SC wants to do is make a name for itself doing extortion. Below is a quote from an email I got from Kurt Slep last night.

Basically if we have made a "mistake" and the KJ is really
clean and honest, it's not a big deal to correct. Although we file the
suit, we also do not SERVE the person without giving them notice and the
opportunity to negotiate or correct things. The easier a person is to
work with and the faster they settle up, the more cooperative we are in
return.

I think it goes without saying that's how everybody is in their day to day dealings. If you have a customer that stands there for 15 minutes asking "Can you bump me up?" after you've told them no, you generally get annoyed because you've already tried to get that customer to get with the program.