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That is what I always thought when kj's wanted to 'swap' libraries to copy. I carefully selected what I had, why the hell would I want another kj to have the exact same songs I offer?

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Because they are not KJ's.. they are patrons that like to sing... and they don't mind "sharing" with other patrons... It's like sharing and swapping baseball cards with a copy machine.

Either just plain stupid or far too trusting. There are a few disc-based KJ's here whose hosts bring in a laptop and rip their discs while doing a show... after a few months, they have the whole library on a drive and the owner doesn't have a clue.... Until they open up and start undercutting their old employers.. with the same library.

In response to the poll topic, and using disc purchases as an example, almost all of us bought discs in good faith. The discs were available, so we assumed all the rights were paid. No, it is not our job to ask every karaoke publisher to prove they paid all their fees. We wouldn't know if they had even if we were looking at the documents. Turns out there are lots of disc manus that weren't totally on the up and up (hello Chartbuster). So we should simply drop the content because we bought in good faith? 99% of the KJs out there have no idea any of this is going on so how are they suppose to know? How are we suppose to know what to do regardless? I never got a letter telling me what to do, and honestly, I don't think anyone here really knows what to do including Jim. The same goes for downloads.. If the download sites say they are legal, and their site is still accessible, how are we to know otherwise?

The poll doesn't reflect the actual realities at all. This issue is between the Manus and the publishers. This pushing total accountability to the KJs on all sides is BS.

I don't especially understand it if it's an outright giveaway.

However, I can understand the mental justification of a swap. It's easier to justify giving copies of your stuff to somebody who's going to give you copies of his stuff that you don't have.

That's especially true of friendly competitors. It's hard to get by in this business alone. What happens if you get sick and need someone to cover a show? You might technically be in competition with somebody yet regard that person as a friend.

And the concept of friendly competitors extends to larger organizations. For example, we have a good relationship with Digitrax. We compete with them, sure, but we work together on some things for our mutual benefit and for the benefit of the industry.

Or maybe somebody's willing to pay you $100 or $200 for a few hours alone with your hard drive. (Phrasing!) When the rent's due, it becomes easier to justify things.

All of that's not to say that swapping/sharing is legally justified or somehow OK, just that there are reasons why a person might be motivated to share his expensive karaoke tracks with a competitor.

The poll is not intended to create a "Us vs Them" kind of conflict at all. And it's true that KJ's that buy their music -- whether it's by download or disc -- do it in good faith. It's also true that over the years manufacturers have been "less than honest" about the licensing aspect of their business telling KJ's that it's none of their business, "we have no obligation to prove anything", "trust us", etc...

So the point here is that piracy in this business, began with the manufacturers -- long before any KJ even had the tools available. If the poll were to reflect "reality" then there would have been a couple more choices:
(1) I don't care, I get my music free off the internet and,
(2) I have to download free songs just to compete anymore,

However, the point of the poll is that any form of piracy and even complacency, can be justified if the piracy doesn't affect the KJ directly. KJ's don't look at the legal scenery from more than 1 perspective. They don't want publishers to sue Karaoke manufacturers and cut off their supply of songs, so the publishers are "greedy" when (exactly the same as PEP enforcing their trademark) they enforce their copyrights that have been violated.

When Harrington disparages the publishers attorneys or call the publishers "greedy", it's meant to garner sympathy from the KJ's for their legal problems --- which they created themselves.

KJ's really don't care if the source is SBI, KSF, DKK or even the publishers themselves as long as they can get usable, affordable and popular songs for the patrons. Because "getting the songs" has always been the main focus.

I have never called any music publisher "greedy."

If anything, I have been an apologist for the music publishers, explaining why they do certain things the way they do them. I have also repeatedly expressed frustration that they are not more aggressive about enforcing their rights. I would be ecstatic if they would, for example, join with us in some suits against hard drive sellers.

By and large, the people I work with at the various publishing groups are conscientious, reasonable people who are good stewards of the properties they are entrusted to monetize.

The problems I have had with publishers' attorneys are confined to outside counsel whose motivations are, to say the least, suspect.

If 90% of hosts are pirates, I would venture to say 60% of those have no idea that they are doing anything wrong.

Your average person that is "out of compliance" didn't actively seek out music on a torrent site or meet a hard drive dealer in a dark alley. They bought music from what they assumed was a completely legitimate source or swapped music with a friendly competitor or bought from an unlicensed site, or bought some disks off eBay that turned out to be copies.

It is very important to keep up the effort to educate people on the actual laws before you start throwing around accusations. Most of them suffer more from ignorance than intentional piracy!

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C Mc
KJ, FL

Did he beat you up on the playground? Any attorney's "motivations" whether "inside or outside" are no different than your own: Protect the interests of their client and in the process, make money.

What other "motivations" could any opposing counsel have?

I'm unwilling to speak more definitely about my experiences with certain individuals because of a pending investigation by federal law enforcement, so we'll have to leave it at that. Suffice it to say that your perceptions about a particular case are not informed in the slightest.

I believe it's safe to say that all parties in this have their share of dirt.
Starting with our laws. Which, I believe, reflect the will of the publishers and were put in place with little or no resistance.

I think it would be a competently different ball game all the way around if the US had a system similar to European.

KJ A has the original DK 1-99 set of discs. KJ B has a large amount of Sound Choice Spotlight discs. Both KJs are booked solid with shows on just about every might of the week. They know each other fairly well and really don't compete against each other for shows. They agree to 'swap" 100 disc for 100 disc to expand their libraries. I think that this type of trading went on quite often in the beginning of disc copying being available. Once it became easy to download any karaoke track ever sold in a matter of seconds; the more tech savvy KJs jumped way ahead of the KJ's that got together to swap what they had actually purchased. Even if five KJ's with 5,000 songs each got together and increased their libraries to 25,000 songs; they still couldn't compete fairly with the KJ who downloaded 300,000 songs to his hard drive. What I have always found to be very funny is that even with 300,000 songs, the KJ really only has about 40,000 individual song titles and about 260,000 repeats. I guess it's just easier to keep all of the duplicate tracks than to go through all of them to delete the 260,000 duplicate tracks to conserve space on your hard drive. Even today, the same songs come out from multiple brand names and they supposedly use the exact same music tracks to make their karaoke files. The only difference is the fonts and the way the words are swiped. Just more duplicates taking up space. I don't get it.If you have the Mr. Entertainer version of a song, is someone going to complain because they prefer the SBI version of the same song? Yeah! I guess they will. That explains why the KJs like to have every song ever made on every brand who ever made it. This way they can always choose a track other than Sound Choice or Chartbuster if they're worried about the monster on the wing. I wonder how many songs are ONLY available on Sound Choice that were never made by any other karaoke manufacturer? Is there a list somewhere? I guess if a pirate KJ who had a regular who sang a song that was only on a sound choice disc, he could make a home made copy of the track using the audio track from the sound choice disc to camouflage the fact that it was a sound choice karaoke file.

<snip> x3

Oh, and just so I don't miss this category of pirate - because in this example, pirating was "free":

We had a (few) brick and mortar stores that sold karaoke discs of all brands and flavors... and to "deter theft" the store would display the jewel case... empty of the contents. When you wanted to purchase it, they would get the disc for you....

However, those unwrapped discs had already made a trip to the copy machine and out the back door, sometimes to a "friendly KJ" or store employee first, then on to the KJ... The original disc was still at the store and of course, sold....

So the pirate in this case, bought nothing, and the store didn't lose money either.

I always wondered how a few "unsavory type KJ's" seemed to have all the latest and greatest stuff because based on their lifestyles, they didn't have 2 nickels to rub together.

Didn't seem to matter if it was SC or All Hits or KJ tools, these KJ's had 'em all... on disc because computer karaoke wasn't born yet...

I've seen that too..

We had a store doing similar, except they would make the copy (they ran multiple systems as well for shows - up to 10 at one point), then re-shrink wrap the disc and sell it as new while all their systems now had a copy. They dealt with all the major and minor labels and had everything that was ever available (at that time) for each of their shows. THAT was hard to compete with. On the good note, their shows weren't run very well, low quality gear and not great hosts. They have been out of business for at least 10 years now.

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They finally had to compete with people that had free music too, and a big cheap library wasn't enough any more

Yep. They were so cheap, they didn't buy the mixer with the "TALENT" button on it...

It only had 2 buttons that were marked "PLAY" and "NEXT" and 2 sliders marked "LOUDER" and "TUNNEL."

On the up side - that is a kind of piracy that we don't have to worry about much anymore.

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-Chris

And this was true in most of the cases. I did know some great shows that used pirated music as well and they actually charged proper rates unlike the play for beer money kj's.

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This aired just a little while ago....