Any product can be used for illegal purposes. A knife that cuts cheese, can be used to kill your wife or children. Your car becomes a lethal weapon in a split second of road-rage. Life giving water can easily drown a young child in the bathtub. What makes a person use anything for illegal purposes? What is illegal in one country often is the accepted norm in other countries around the world. Just look at how Osama Bin Laden is revered in the Arab states for his murdering USA citizens.
There are a number of reasons why we justified our development of Microstudio. Some I can immediately think of are:
- It is legal to make a backup of legally purchased products. What other industry in the USA other than Karaoke tries to tell you it is illegal to protect your purchased Assets?
- Karaoke producers discontinue production of their discs, making it impossible to buy replacements. We have two clients with over 2,000 legally purchased discs, with 2/3rds no longer available for replacment.
- Singers buy a karaoke disc usually for one song on it. If they have 100 songs they sing, they have 100 discs to take with them, and get stolen while they are singing on stage (I have heard many first-hand stories of this happening). Hosts are at constant risk of having their livelyhood terminated if their discs are stolen. Insurance companies are notoriously slow on paying for replacements, and many won't at all. I know of one instance where a Host was murdered when he refused to give up his discs to a mugger. Do you think he would be alive today if he had a backup copy that he could use to meet his contracted performances the next night? What does his wife and children do now?
- One producer charges $50 for replacement discs, even for new discs that have no audio on them that should be replaced for free. I have heard this fact many times from clients who purchased them and then had to pay for replacements within the same month.
- Singers want to play their songs on their computer to practice before singing on stage.
- If you don't have a backup disc and you scratch your master, your show is down until you receive a replacement disc.
- Countries outside the USA have no copy protection laws.
We refuse to sell Microstudio to anyone who has identified they intend to use it for illegal reasons. Our license clearly states conditions where we can revoke your license to use Microstudio.
There are many clients who are legally using Microstudio to protect their investment. Copyright law gives you the right to protect your Asset investment. It also is to protect the rights of musicians, songwriters, publishers, and producers. The misuse of any product for illegal purposes hurts the industry. Napster is a perfect example. Tell me why RIA didn't sue Naptster and MP3.com and others out of existence immediately if they are worried about this problem?
About your question Doubletrack, how do you think we feel about our software being ripped off?
We have actively persued every person we find stealing and distributing our product, just as Sound Choice does. However, we don't prevent you from making a backup of your legal copy of Microstudio.
The first day back at work after a 5-week bout with Pneumonia, a UK client reported a website with a free download of KHProducer. Before I went home at 1AM that site was off the Internet.
If anyone is concerned about illegal use of products, why don't you push for your local school board to adopt and teach ethics courses at your local elementary schools to teach kids that making copies of songs and giving them to others is illegal in our society. That way, future generations will not be faced with the problem we have in American society today.
Brian Coor is absolutely correct. The best protection for a Karaoke producer is to offer a reasonably priced solultion to a scratched or broken disc.
As to my statements, facts substantiate our claims. If Sound Choice doesn't change directions soon, you can expect to see a Class Action law suit started against them. I know of two right now who are ready to spearhead it.
Our
Hoster Program will allow copying your songs to a computer hard drive with WMA compression. I could easily support MP3+G like Tyrannosoft and others do, that encourage and enable theft, but we are spending the extra engineering time to recombine the RW graphics/lyrics bytes back into the audio so it is still identified as from the manufacturer. Hoster has a Start Show button. Once this is clicked, the Import Tracks operation will not function. Why you might wonder? Because we are actively discouraging a host from taking a singer's disc and importing tracks to the hard drive... that is theft. However, it is time consuming for us to do what we are; providing the ability to enter songs into the Play List that are located on CDG discs (not on the hard drive), or VCD or DVD discs. But that is what the Host requires to run a public show...
legally. So we do it. Our focus - every minute - every day - year in and year out - is forcing legal use of the products we develop.
Sound Choice paid millons of US$ for a big cut of Eat, Sleep, Music. It has been pointed out to me that ESM makes custom discs that can't be identified as being from a manufacturer. I am told they use labels just like you have available to you, to identify the custom discs they sell, which include Sound Choice songs. Go figure!
As George and other have pointed out, any company who refuses to take care of their clients deserves to go out of business. As we sell our products like Karaoke Pro and Karaoke Home Producer, that empower users and hosts to make their own songs, that will further damage the monopoly that some companies have enjoyed. I can't tell you how much I thought about what our products would potentionally do to the industry. However, companies like Chartbusters and Stellar Records who turn out a quality product and protect their clients, will always be around providing their products and services. I work very hard every day to insure that MTU will also.
Lord willing, we will unveil a MASSIVE upgrade in our support, customer contact, eCommerce store and delivering our software by the end of November. You can see first hints of this at
our development news page. We are very excited about being able to give our clients better service and lower our costs. This will allow us to provide free upgrades to our clients. No, major upgrades will still carry our small $15 charge. Hey, when I can afford to drive a newer used car than my 1992, I'll give our clients the upgrades. Until then... help us pay for the good engineering we give you.
QED