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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:07 am 
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JimHarrington wrote:
As I have made clear, I do not post here, or anywhere, "on behalf of PEP." My comments here are my own. And I'm here primarily to offer insight into various issues, on my own.

I am not actively engaged in PEP's day-to-day business. I still have outstanding cases in which I represent PEP, and I consult for PEP from time to time.


Really then explain the use of “We”, “Our” below. (highlighted in red)

bazinga wrote:
PEP can just add that every lessee must contact PEP whether through email, letter, or phone call annually to update their status and to confirm they are abiding by the agreement.


JimHarrington wrote:
We did add that requirement.


bazinga wrote:
It seems like these people provided PEP the opportunity to make "more" money off their Gem sets. The statement goes on to say:

"This solves the problem of accidental loss, theft, damage, or unauthorized sale or transfer, and it relieves our licensees of the need to store and protect our property".

If this solves the problem, why doesn't PEP leave the length of the lease to five years because PEP is holding the physical discs?


JimHarrington wrote:
It solves one of the problems. It did not solve the problem of not having close enough contact with our licensees. And, as I noted above, the cost of a GEM series license actually went down.


bazinga wrote:
I'm sure the people who violated the lease agreement had to pay for the discs whether it was destroyed, lost, or stolen.


JimHarrington wrote:
Actually, no. We canceled their licenses, but the expense of going after the licensees was deemed, at the time, to be a waste of money.


bazinga wrote:
Some things PEP does just rattles my mind. I'm not a PEP basher, nor do I condone how PEP is going about its business "fighting" piracy. But when I think about it, PEP is only in it for the money. Sorry Jim, but I have to believe it's all about the money and not because PEP wants to protect the lessee since they claim that the amount of Gems available are dwindling.


JimHarrington wrote:
PEP is not a charity. It's a for-profit business. I'm not sure why that's confusing to people. PEP opposes piracy because it's in its business interest to do so, not because it feels a moral imperative to stamp out piracy.

It turns out that piracy is also bad for the industry as a whole. It deprives songwriters and publishers of their royalties. It inhibits the creation of new karaoke music. It drives down the rates that karaoke professionals can charge. It leads to oversaturation of the marketplace, so that karaoke is less effective as a tool for increasing patronage. But PEP can only use the tools that are available to it.

Given that well in excess of 90% of the people we've ever sued for infringement never bought even one karaoke disc before being sued, and given that in excess of 99% were pirates to at least some degree (fewer than 10 defendants were actually able to demonstrate full 1:1 correspondence for their systems), I'm curious as to what method of "fighting" piracy you would have preferred that we use.

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:20 am 
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8) Didn't you know it is the royal we, we are talking about when it comes to anything related to SC, RLC. :biggrinthumb:


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 6:36 am 
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RLC wrote:
Really then explain the use of “We”, “Our” below. (highlighted in red)

bazinga wrote:
PEP can just add that every lessee must contact PEP whether through email, letter, or phone call annually to update their status and to confirm they are abiding by the agreement.


JimHarrington wrote:
We did add that requirement.


bazinga wrote:
It seems like these people provided PEP the opportunity to make "more" money off their Gem sets. The statement goes on to say:

"This solves the problem of accidental loss, theft, damage, or unauthorized sale or transfer, and it relieves our licensees of the need to store and protect our property".

If this solves the problem, why doesn't PEP leave the length of the lease to five years because PEP is holding the physical discs?


JimHarrington wrote:
It solves one of the problems. It did not solve the problem of not having close enough contact with our licensees. And, as I noted above, the cost of a GEM series license actually went down.


bazinga wrote:
I'm sure the people who violated the lease agreement had to pay for the discs whether it was destroyed, lost, or stolen.


JimHarrington wrote:
Actually, no. We canceled their licenses, but the expense of going after the licensees was deemed, at the time, to be a waste of money.


bazinga wrote:
Some things PEP does just rattles my mind. I'm not a PEP basher, nor do I condone how PEP is going about its business "fighting" piracy. But when I think about it, PEP is only in it for the money. Sorry Jim, but I have to believe it's all about the money and not because PEP wants to protect the lessee since they claim that the amount of Gems available are dwindling.


JimHarrington wrote:
PEP is not a charity. It's a for-profit business. I'm not sure why that's confusing to people. PEP opposes piracy because it's in its business interest to do so, not because it feels a moral imperative to stamp out piracy.

It turns out that piracy is also bad for the industry as a whole. It deprives songwriters and publishers of their royalties. It inhibits the creation of new karaoke music. It drives down the rates that karaoke professionals can charge. It leads to oversaturation of the marketplace, so that karaoke is less effective as a tool for increasing patronage. But PEP can only use the tools that are available to it.

Given that well in excess of 90% of the people we've ever sued for infringement never bought even one karaoke disc before being sued, and given that in excess of 99% were pirates to at least some degree (fewer than 10 defendants were actually able to demonstrate full 1:1 correspondence for their systems), I'm curious as to what method of "fighting" piracy you would have preferred that we use.


All of those instances referred to a time when I was actively involved in PEP's business, and in those cases, I was referring to decisions or actions in which I had a role, thus making "we" or "our" the appropriate pronoun.

This is an excellent example, by the way, of how the pro-piracy crowd is ready to jump on any perceived misstep as evidence of hypocrisy. You need us to be imperfect because it makes you feel better about supporting piracy. "They're not REALLY anti-piracy," you say, "so it's OK for me to be pro-piracy." Or "He said 'we' so he must really have lied when he said he was quitting!" It's just childish.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 7:44 am 
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JimHarrington wrote:
All of those instances referred to a time when I was actively involved in PEP's business, and in those cases, I was referring to decisions or actions in which I had a role, thus making "we" or "our" the appropriate pronoun.

This is an excellent example, by the way, of how the pro-piracy crowd is ready to jump on any perceived misstep as evidence of hypocrisy. You need us to be imperfect because it makes you feel better about supporting piracy. "They're not REALLY anti-piracy," you say, "so it's OK for me to be pro-piracy." Or "He said 'we' so he must really have lied when he said he was quitting!" It's just childish.

Well geez, I am sorry I have offended you Jim, but I have to say, and I am sure I am not alone, that your posts are very indicative of someone who is still actively engaged in PEP's day to day business.
Maybe to be safe you should include a disclaimer with each of your posts from now on. :mrgreen:
By the way, even though you know nothing about me, or who I am you willingly, on a public forum, cast me into the pro karaoke piracy category.
It seems that you want to call everyone that doesn't agree with PEP/Sound Choices business ethics, a pirate. Now who is being childish?

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 7:46 am 
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JimHarrington wrote:

All of those instances referred to a time when I was actively involved in PEP's business, and in those cases, I was referring to decisions or actions in which I had a role, thus making "we" or "our" the appropriate pronoun.

This is an excellent example, by the way, of how the pro-piracy crowd is ready to jump on any perceived misstep as evidence of hypocrisy. You need us to be imperfect because it makes you feel better about supporting piracy. "They're not REALLY anti-piracy," you say, "so it's OK for me to be pro-piracy." Or "He said 'we' so he must really have lied when he said he was quitting!" It's just childish.



8) There you go again Jim' if anyone isn't a fan of yours or PEP's they are supporting pirates or are pirates. According to you 95% of the hosts are illegal and the rest are just lying about being legal. If that is the case you coming on the site is supporting pirates or pirate sympathizers isn't it? What this is a perfect example of you' and your constant spinning in order to lease some more of your dated material. Just keep your discs to yourself, which is by the way what you are doing anyway. You keep teasing about you are going away, just go away, nobody is buying the soap anymore.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 8:00 am 
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I agree the last few posts seem to carry a childish tone- no offense LR or RLC.

Jim doesn't need to come to this or any public karaoke forum at all...

I do think it was a bit of a "childish" comment though Jim that you think any of us here are pro-piracy...just because your former employers' mistakes, slights and judgements were brought to light and exposed by Chip.

PEP is a FOR-profit entity....they have no desire to stamp out piracy or even curb it because they PROFIT from it. It seems they are the pro-piracy ones you speak of. Don't confuse the two..... :withstupid: -john


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 8:52 am 
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RLC wrote:
It seems that you want to call everyone that doesn't agree with PEP/Sound Choices business ethics, a pirate. Now who is being childish?


I didn't call you a pirate. I said you were pro-pirate. When you engage in nitpicking attacks based on your own failure to understand context, in an attempt to attack me and my former employer by falsely undermining our credibility, that's a "pro-pirate" activity. My assessment of your status as "pro-pirate" is based solely on your comments on here. I have no information about whether you're a pirate or not.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 9:03 am 
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JimHarrington wrote:
I didn't call you a pirate. I said you were pro-pirate. When you engage in nitpicking attacks based on your own failure to understand context, in an attempt to attack me and my former employer by falsely undermining our credibility, that's a "pro-pirate" activity. My assessment of your status as "pro-pirate" is based solely on your comments on here. I have no information about whether you're a pirate or not.


Image

I reread my posts and not seeing where I attacked you or SC or PEP.

Your posts as of lately sure "read" as if you are still actively participating in the day to day activities of PEP/SC, and frankly that's fine if you are, however you had left the impression, per your post of Dec 31st, 2017, that you were no longer involved in the day to day activities of PEP/SC.
How such a wondering on my part could ruffle your feathers so kind of speaks volumes, at least to me.
I think John said it correctly:
johnreynolds wrote:
PEP is a FOR-profit entity....they have no desire to stamp out piracy or even curb it because they PROFIT from it. It seems they are the pro-piracy ones you speak of. Don't confuse the two..... -john

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 11:59 am 
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JimHarrington wrote:
This is an excellent example, by the way, of how the pro-piracy crowd is ready to jump on any perceived misstep as evidence of hypocrisy. You need us to be imperfect because it makes you feel better about supporting piracy. "They're not REALLY anti-piracy," you say, "so it's OK for me to be pro-piracy." Or "He said 'we' so he must really have lied when he said he was quitting!" It's just childish.


Those of us whom you would label as pro-piracy during your conniptions do share a common trait:

We've never taken money from actual pirates and given them our blessing to keep on pirating anything from any source as long as the monthly payment keeps coming in.

We've never made unlicensed copies of our discs and distributed those unlicensed copies on a flash drive for the purpose of making yet another unlicensed copy on a hard drive so that we could profit from licensing use of the content of the original media to a third party without transfer of possession of the (first sale) original discs (something video rental stores wouldn't dare do).

Because that would go beyond pro-piracy; that would be professional-piracy.

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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 12:01 pm 
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JimHarrington wrote:
I didn't call you a pirate. I said you were pro-pirate. When you engage in nitpicking attacks based on your own failure to understand context, in an attempt to attack me and my former employer by falsely undermining our credibility, that's a "pro-pirate" activity. My assessment of your status as "pro-pirate" is based solely on your comments on here. I have no information about whether you're a pirate or not.

Jim, based on your analogy: Then that makes me a racist because I didn't vote for Obama, and a misogynist because I didn't vote for Hillary. :wink: Or maybe I just didn't agree with what their message was. :idea:


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 1:15 pm 
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JimHarrington wrote:

I didn't call you a pirate. I said you were pro-pirate. When you engage in nitpicking attacks based on your own failure to understand context, in an attempt to attack me and my former employer by falsely undermining our credibility, that's a "pro-pirate" activity. My assessment of your status as "pro-pirate" is based solely on your comments on here. I have no information about whether you're a pirate or not.



8) How can PEP be your former employer if you are still legally representing them in the courtroom? Are you doing your legal work without pay? Are you consulting PEP for free? I wonder about your credibility when you constantly get caught in false hoods and statements that make no sense. Really Jim it just doesn't matter anymore, most hosts just don't care, they just wish you would go away. You will have to define pirate Jim, after all there are the small pirates, and the large so called legal corporate pirates. Since PEP's SC product was partially pirated, wouldn't anybody buying and using that product be supporting pirates? Sort of like the Captain in the movie "Casablanca" stating that he is shocked to find out gambling is going on at Rick's, as he is getting paid his winnings.


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PostPosted: Mon Apr 09, 2018 2:05 pm 
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JimHarrington wrote:
All of those instances referred to a time when I was actively involved in PEP's business, and in those cases, I was referring to decisions or actions in which I had a role, thus making "we" or "our" the appropriate pronoun.

This is an excellent example, by the way, of how the pro-piracy crowd is ready to jump on any perceived misstep as evidence of hypocrisy. You need us to be imperfect because it makes you feel better about supporting piracy. "They're not REALLY anti-piracy," you say, "so it's OK for me to be pro-piracy." Or "He said 'we' so he must really have lied when he said he was quitting!" It's just childish.

Jim, one last question and I promise I won't ask anymore about this subject. Are these the kind of examples that PEP believes people will think a KJ is representing PEP when they use an SC karaoke song in their show?


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 2:55 am 
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Attachment:
20180410_035115.jpg
20180410_035115.jpg [ 1013.17 KiB | Viewed 28350 times ]

You're calling me pro what now?.... :evil:

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 7:48 am 
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8) It's official you have your papers, today you are a pro.


P.S. Gee I did it the hard way OJT, and never got my papers. I wonder if I should give back all the money I made? No I'll just keep it like SC/PEP did. After all possession is nine points of the law, right Jim?


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 9:34 am 
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This stuff really makes me laugh...

Honestly the pic on the web site looks to be about 40 sets(+/-). Which considering that PEP doesn't sell them everyday means that it IS probably well stocked. Considering how OLD the stock is though, it makes perfect sense that no one is interested in overpaying for it, and now it's being discounted. Pure business sense on the part of PEP to try and wring the last few bucks out of there stuff.

But: What if there was a fire at the storage facility and all the GEM series were destroyed? Would everyone who owns a PEP flash drive now be illegal because there is no more 1:1 Ratio? Would they have to stop using the GEM series? Would they be entitled to refunds because they paid for a product that wasn't destroyed by them? It's not like PEP can reprint any more CDs to back up those flash drives can they?

But that isn't why I laugh about all this:

Sound Choice has always been notoriously slow to get stuff out to the market. Some of my now favorite brands can be had much quicker then PEP would ever hope to get it out. Since we don't know how the quality will be (the band has been off for a while), no one here would be silly enough to believe things will be just as the were, like that gap never happened.

I expect more slow releases, and lower sales overall form PEP. Not because of pirates, but because other companies already have a system in place and we are all familiar with their product. But PEP will still blame pirates when its sales are poor, and not because of it's management.

About it's security worries they use as a stall: Sound choice can put out stuff and have it's security too if they wanted. The technology is out there if they bother to look for it. Promo Only's POOL software watermarks every audio and video is sends to its customers. They use software that processes the file on the users end, adding the watermark. So, there is no excuse to produce music because of security reasons.

Finally... If I remember correctly, didn't Chartbuster start to sell hard drives just before they folded? I feel history might be repeating itself here, even if PEP DOES have the CD's it claims to have.

But what do we know?


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 10:29 am 
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JimHarrington wrote:
Phoenix has now put out a statement on this issue.

https://pep.rocks/discs


Quote:
The following is a statement from Kurt Slep, the President of Phoenix Entertainment Partners, LLC, issued on April 5, 2018.


Dated on the 5th.. Hmm


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 3:56 pm 
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The Lone Ranger wrote:
8) It's official you have your papers, today you are a pro.


P.S. Gee I did it the hard way OJT, and never got my papers. I wonder if I should give back all the money I made? No I'll just keep it like SC/PEP did. After all possession is nine points of the law, right Jim?

no, look at the date....

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 4:03 pm 
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8) So despite discs that were destroyed, stolen, lost, or pawned there still are enough sets to meet demand? There must not be much of a demand? I mean the limited sets were made now several years ago, and with over 50,000 estimated hosts in the U.S., you would think if the demand were high no product would be available. Since this to many hosts is the best product on the planet it seems strange all sets haven't been leased by now. Also since the leases represent most of SC/PEP's earnings on the product side, where are they getting the money to pay for their legal process? It also seems strange that since many hosts feel SC will make you successful as a host, that licensees have been forced to pawn their sets. Seems like SC/PEP should have had some type of buy back program since the sets are so valuable to them?


Last edited by The Lone Ranger on Tue Apr 10, 2018 5:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 4:04 pm 
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Paradigm Karaoke wrote:
The Lone Ranger wrote:
8) It's official you have your papers, today you are a pro.


P.S. Gee I did it the hard way OJT, and never got my papers. I wonder if I should give back all the money I made? No I'll just keep it like SC/PEP did. After all possession is nine points of the law, right Jim?

no, look at the date....



8) I was talking about the date on the certification. My eyes are bad and I couldn't see the date almost 8 years ago it was official.


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PostPosted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 7:08 pm 
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dvdgdry wrote:
PEP will offer the GEMs again at another 'bargain basement' price. The last offer was a test.
Since they apparently are now losing out in the Courts the lower offer allows them to get more KJs, who think it is bargain, on a contract. That contract WILL hold up in a court.

At least this is what I think. How about you Chip?

I've always suggested that they don't sell karaoke songs or anything karaoke related.

They sell contracts.

How many contracts do they currently have?

    Audit contract
    Safe harbor contract
    Prime contract
    H.E.L.P. contract
    CB registration contract
    SCE entertainment contract
    Gem set license contract
    "Advance program" contract

So in the last 8 years, they've produced zero karaoke music tracks and at least 8 different contracts.

You tell me what they are in business to sell.

BTW, I don't count anything from the CB label as PEP production - even though Harrington characterized them as "new production from old masters" because it was nothing more than "dumpster diving" tracks that wouldn't sell the first time around.

They are in the "contract business."


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