KIAA Membership

[ddouglass]

The area you are in makes a difference. Since I live in a rural area and play at a VFW (of which I am Life Member and know the finances of the post) then I get $150 on a Friday night and $175 for Saturday night (open later). The guy down the road is working just for tips because the club just opened and they don't have the funds to pay for entertainment and the other two clubs in the area don't have karaoke (too small or to many fights).
Those down the road in the Houston metro area are making more than that because the money is there.

[admin]

We respect Sound Choice as one of the best producers. We hope they are only going after true bootleggers who don't deserve to steal your shows. If you know of a KJ making money who bought a hard drive on EBay for $400 with 35,000+ songs or who bought a hard drive copy from anywhere else (it is illegal) or who swap songs with friends or other KJs, or who downloads CDG songs from MIRC servers, please turn them in to Sound Choice. We need to clean up the industry.

Here are the facts that we are aware of:

1. About six years ago Sound Choice went after a KJ in the Michigan(?) area under copyright law, who refused to settle out of court. The case went to court and the judge threw Sound Choice out, based on their claims. The KJ was cleared.

2. Sound Choice has never taken anyone to court since, to our knowledge and research.

3. They are blackmailing KJs into paying them $6500. If you sign anything as a settlement out of court you are bound under contract law to obey whatever they have you sign. Check with your own lawyer but we recommend that you never sign any contract preventing you from doing anything with karaoke.

4. If you have legally purchased all of the songs you have on your hard drive, to the best of our knowledge and research, YOU ARE LEGAL. Tell Sound Choice you'll see them in court.

5. If you have any illegal songs you did not pay for DELETE THEM NOW. If you are found with illegal songs, pray. That's your only hope.

6. Twice before MTU has paid IPJustice.org to research all current law for your rights as KJs/users of CDG legally purchased songs. Please click here to read their report .
Pay special attention to "format shifting" from one media to another. It happens world-wide every day.

[Musicman51]

I found this forum posting, from the anoited one Kurt Slep. Thought i'd pass it along. You make up your own mind.

　



Sound Choice

Member

Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 27
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Thanked 93 Times in 23 Posts


If I had the time, I would try to answer everyone point by point, but let me say this: For those who are predominantly "legal" (i.e., they have an original legally purchased Sound Choice disc to support each and every copy that they have of a song file on a hard drive or CAVS system) we are not going to pursue a lawsuit against you if you have the discs BEFORE we investigate and file suit. We are not being hardnosed or unfair. If you are "legal", we recognize that there might be a disc or two missing over the years and you shouldn't have any concerns. Come on - I hope that no one really believes that we would waste our time pursuing someone in that situation!

Those that settle quickly are only being charged what would be a little over full retail for the library of discs that we ship you - although we could be much more punitive. You also have a permanent physical "record" (the CDG) in case the music publishers ever decide to come seeking retribution against the KJ community. (Remember the on-going RIAA lawsuits for huge amounts - and those settlements have been against HOME USERS, not even commercial users like KJ hosts). If we wanted to go to court, the MINIMUM we could ask for would be $200,000 and the maximum could be $4,000,000. So why would any KJ be so stupid/stubborn to want to go to court to learn they have no defense and pay tens of thousands more than it would take to get themselves legal?

Basically we want to be paid and WE SHOULD BE PAID for the music that many KJs have been using for years to earn a living or for pocket change or whatever. If you disagree with this statement, then you shouldn't mind if I come to your house and steal your car or something else you own. If you have a great many discs already, but maybe slid to the "dark side" in cloning a rig or "filling out" your library with stolen, traded songs, etc. we will take that into account. But whatever the amount is, just remember it is a "pittance" compared to what it could be. For those who are named in a suit and wait to respond until they are served (we try to give at least a 20 day response time via an advance letter after you have been named), their cost will go up because our costs to deal with the matter goes up. The smarter KJs (and yes, we are running across more and more of them) are buying a library of our discs BEFORE they even get investigated. And that's OK with us. They save money and we save a hassle. Sounds like a win-win.

For those who chose to buy before we "catch you" the library of discs on hand is being sold for about $0.75 per song. We are working on relicensing about 7500 songs in our catalog and releasing them in 320kbps MP3+G format, so that you don't even have to go to the trouble of format conversion. We still can't legally grant you the right to put them on a computer because our licenses do not specifically state we have that right. But since publishers know that our CDGs are being used in a commercial setting (and authorize them for that use), it is our opinion that as long as you have a 1:1 ratio of disc to song file, the US publishers aren't going to worry about the format shift problem. (In Australia and the UK they DO have a format shift license that allows this and it costs about $400 a year and covers your commercial music and karaoke discs).

As for suing venues, we are fully within our rights to do so if they continue to benefit from a host running an illegal system. It's called CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT. And we are pursuing this approach AT THE INSISTENCE of and for the benefit of many of our long time karaoke hosts who have bought our products and who have been put out of business or suffered financially from competition from thieves who have had the unfair advantage of not having any investment in their music. As more thieves lose their gigs because a bar doesn't want to be at risk and the bars hire legal KJs, those who are legal will thank Sound Choice and the KIAA more and more because they can get more gigs at a higher price. If you are a thief (we are going to move away from the glamorized term of "pirate") you will probably cuss Sound Choice and the KIAA more and more as you find your opportunities limited.

For those who are adamant that Sound Choice is the “bad guy” in the on-going scenario of lawsuits, I would be hard pressed to even understand your position if you think we are not entitled to being paid. You might not like our “collection methods”, but there is a perfectly legal solution if you are worried about a lawsuit and how you would defend or respond. Avoid the suit altogether - be PROACTIVE – BUY BEFORE YOU “FRY”. No one is stopping you from doing what you can and should legally have been doing all along – buying our products. We are even doing some limited financing and are trying to arrange credit sources prior to the launch of our new products. Stay tuned for all that.

Kurt Slep
CEO Sound Choice

PS. I won’t be monitoring the responses to my post here. I will be busy trying to get our new product out to market, so that we can have a better solution for our KJ customers.

[ddouglass]

My only comment is they are not doing any checking before filing and they do not let you buy the ones that you may have that are illegal but instead require that you buy there entire library which I have no need for at $6500.00. Additionally you have to sign a contract with them stating you are guilty. As Admin said this is a bad idea.
Additionally when they file against the establishments that these people are playing at those establishments and others who see this going on no longer want to have karaoke at all. So how is that helping us???? And what kind of settlement are they offering those establishments?

[billyo]

i think i understand their position, if you're a kj and have 5 people working for you in diff. venues, then in my opinion you should have, like they said you have to have all the orig. disc for every comp. that's being used in those venues, having a comp/laptop , copied disc /hhd for back-ups shouldnt be considered illegal., unless like i said it's being used to do another venue.

[Musicman51]

Billy, i completly agree with you, and it doesn't matter if it's 2, 3, 5, or if his is the only rig he has going. I actually can sympathise with Sound Choice with the pirating thing. But thats where my sympathy ends. In the entertainment business. And it is a business, whether you do it as a hobby part time like myself, or you're going 7 nights aweek. If you're a software manufacture, or a club, bar, disc manu, whatever. Perception, and the impression you make upon others, is 99.99999% of the game. If you run a great show, have first class gear, a library to die for. And you treat others with disrespect, and not give them a fair shake. You cut your own throat. This is exactly what Sound Choice has done here. I said it before, and i'll say it again. There is a right and a wrong way to go about doing things. The feeling of the majority of KJ's i've spoken with, say they are done with sound choice. And my two closest kj friends, run an all disc show. And they say they are also done with the slep castopo. The KIAA have the first 3 letters correct {KIA} Karaoke Industry Alliance of ....and i don't need to tell you what many in the karaoke community say that last {A} actually stands for.....

[RIKKI TIKKI]

IMHO Sound Choice is within their legal rights, to pursue the illegal bootleggers/pirates that have evaded paying for the rights to use the SC karaoke music... They obviously are testing the water, as how to go about it, and will ultimately ruffle a few feathers, using the legal system to corral the crooks, and allow the legitimate KJ's to do business as usual. If you are a working KJ like myself and most other KJ's that are reading, and following the test cases of Phoenix, Az. and now Virginia... then you are either worried, or not, if you are even slightly illegal, then you can still be prosecuted, so if it's a few Sound Choice, discs, or songs that you are worried about, please get them replaced with legit originals, or same songs produced by other manufacturers to fill out your libraries.

I have a preponderance of Sound Choice cdg's in my collection/library, and find them to be close to the top of the list of manufacturers when it comes to producing a very good rendition of the original artists that they try to emulate for the Karaoke officianados, whether you are KJ's that make a living using the cdg's, or background music, hobbyists, etc. The quality is there... they paid a lot of money for the licensing rights, and still more in the production costs, for studio time, musicians, duplicating and recording gear, etc.

When somebody bootleggs your rights to make a profit from your business endeavor by pirating your licensed property, and shares it illegally, or make copies and then in turn sells it for profit, you would not sit still and take it either... they are going to recoup some of their lost profits by legal action against those that are grossly infringing, or blatently portraying an illegitimate operation that is profiting from the fruits of their labor, and skirting the licensing rights that Sound Choice paid to use, and in turn, profit from...

Boycotting Sound Choice will only hurt those that are illegal, and worried! Their business (SC), will return when the playing field is leveled, and most of the pirating is eliminated, and the illegal downloaded files can be stopped, so that the company can profit from legal licensing of down loads, and we can move on to the next controversy... and how to improve Hoster, for the future of Karaoke!