Karaoke Forums

Not here, they are trying to make it bars choice to allow smoking or not, so far not going to happen. Even the cigar lounges have smoking bans, although they are trying to get that one overturned as well. Our smoking laws prohibit smoking within 25 from any door or window of a business. There is no concensus or exemptions made - if a bar wants to chance it they could I suppose, however they would get heavy penalties & possible loss of liquor license.

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LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

My guess is that some unscrupulous, immoral and unethical individuals took it upon themselves to take advantage of the "rules" as they were and their illicit business practices forced a change in the rules (if that were the case) in order for the manufacturer to be able curtail their losses and maintain some semblance of control over their own product.

-When the manu starts pointing fingers at myself, and other innocents, I no longer care what the manu's think.

-When their "changes" affect my ability to do business, after I have paid for the product, I no longer care what they think.

-When I support others (zoom, sunfly, all tricera labels) that don't "change" their business plan as said by murray,



-Then that gives the manu the right to become asswipes as well? Whatever happened to 2 wrongs don't make a right?

So, you paid for the product! Did you also pay for the permission to copy that product so you could run your business in the manner you want to? Their changes would not affect your ability to play the disc you paid for . Don't blame them for
your inability to play the disc you purchased. Blame yourself for the business decision you made to copy their product without their permission.

When you convert to hard drive without permission, you are no longer innocent. The only permission you get when you purchase the discs is to play off those discs or cd-r copies of those discs while your originals lie in archive.

They never gave permission to convert to hard drive without an audit and they never will.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Yah but again, why do you care? Wouldn't you rather tell them to eff off instead of saying "toqer, you're not innocent"

Maybe you don't like me and you enjoy it.

I beg to differ. They did give permission to use "a copy" of the content of their cd+g discs while keeping the original in archive.

You keep quoting an artifact post that was dated before the advent of computer karaoke hosting and specifically states disc to disc archive not disc to disk like you would love to have it say.
If you want to go back to those days drop the computer altogether and stay disc based but don't equate that permission to today's technology.
You also like to attack snippits of a post where above what you quoted, I gave reference to your so called permission.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

And you keep equating "copy" with CDRom disc. The permission never restricted the method or the media.

It's not you, I don't like.
I didn't quote anyone so it wasn't directed at you. It is just simple fact. Play off of what medium you bought it in or get audited and get permission are the choices. I hate it when there is a c choice because it's just darn too confusing.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Show me where it said that. From what I remembered reading it specifically said cd-r copy.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

Is that a fact or just facts as presented by the manus? Wouldn't you call Robin Gross's "facts" facts? She's a lawyer too you know. Remember? Hired by MTU Hoster?

Nope. Sorry. There is no mention of media type, but thanks for playin'...

You should know by now Danny that when I state something, I'm gonna have some homework to back it up... it's so important around here...

And to further clarify this: This permission was granted by both Kurt AND Derek Slep - several times in several places and none restricted the media type.

That's a different post than the one I saw - still it predates the computer karaoke show age so They had no idea that you would be using those words to mean any media backup.
Just because they say it then doesn't make it so today, if they change their minds and want to add conditions on that permission, they have that right. If you're so adamant about that permission, why not keep the SC discs in play and go through the court process. If you're not willing to do so then stop attacking the methods SC is using.

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The Line Array Experiment is over. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I see your point c. staley. Using a single copy while keeping the original in archive does not specify the media or shall we say "container" that the content is copied to.

I believe your contention to be that this is tacit permission to put that copy in whatever container you desire and then to use it in any manner you wish.

I believe that if you take factor the time period into the context that it would be reasonable to conclude that the Slep brothers were addressing the professional host/KJ with regard to producing a show using the technology widely available at the time and that was CD-R copies. They were not factoring in home users, because they would have no incentive to make and use copies for commercial karaoke entertainment. It would have been reasonable to assume that only a host/KJ would take the time to duplicate an entire library of CD+G's in order to produce a shows. Only a "pro" would take the time and spend the $$ to do this and it was still emphasized that only one copy would be considered authorized.

How do you verify that only one copy is being put into only one alternate container?

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Never the same show twice!

maybe it's a little thing, but that was posted to Lonnie directly, and had he taken them up on it (don't know if he did) he had explicit permission and now it is "nevermind....we changed the rules on it". yes it's old, no it doesn't say specific mediums, if i did that now, i would still need an audit as well. i understand it is their trademark, but dont understand how they get hurt by this at all. using tracks i didnt pay for.....hurts them, for sure. using multiple copies of one paid for track.....hurts them, for sure. using one copy of one paid for track and leaving the other in the safe at home hurts no one, at all. i can not think of a way someone could say it does. every company has a trademark, and if using a copy of it hurts them, by all means, it shouldn't be done. how are any of us using one copy and keeping the original safe at home hurting anyone? before some jump my $h!t, remember, i have both certs, i just don't understand it still.

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

How do they verify that you are using only one copy of the Gem series today?


Not really. The post was directed to everyone on the site who had a number of questions, not just Lonnie. Note the "lots of good questions guys" comment at the beginning. As I mentioned, both Kurt and Derek stated this same position at different times to different groups on different sites so this is not simply a one-shot deal. He even mentions that he will "fill in details here and many other places.." which he and Derek did. (I have those copies too.)


And I agree with you that it can't cause any damages and even HarringtonLaw has stated that proving damages in just such a case would be difficult. It wouldn't be difficult if you ran 3 shows with only 1 set of discs however.

Let me ask you these simple questions:

(1) Was your friend Michael who had his case dropped, running a computer?

(2) Did he have an audit?

(3) Did he provide photographs of his discs?

In other words, what do you believe (or know) that happened to cause the suit against him -even though he "copied their trademark without permission" to be dropped?

You can understand why some hosts rather than deal with SC and all of the problems using their product entails, simply refuse to use the product any more. It is a prudent business decision to protect your operation and also the venues you work for. Their product is less important every day that passes, and they refuse to accept the reality of the hyper connection of the computer world of today. All accumulated knowledge quadruples every 10 years now. In the next 10 years even more astounding technological accomplishments will be achieved and enjoyed by people the world over. I don't see why a whole industry should be held ransom by one company.

Everyone keeps pointing to Sound Choice as the bad guy here. Chartbuster and Pop hits are getting involved. Pop hits seems totally disorganized and clueless but is paying lip service. I think we'll see CB more heavily involved in the near future. Times have changed since the digital revolution. I remember being at a Jolt forum get together years ago and having the president of CB tell us he didn't care if we made dupes as long as we owned at least one. At that time it wasn't nearly as big a deal and I don't think the manufacturers saw mutirigging and pirating as being a huge threat to their existence 15 years ago. We all know CB now wants 1:1. I'm doing a compliance check with sc next week. They haven't come after me but I have 600 of their 8000 series disks in my main system and I just bought a gem to improve the core of my second rig. Out of the 6000 gem songs I picked up about 1400 that weren't in that system and replaced others that were on disks of lesser quality. Attendance at shows being done with rig 2 has increased dramatically and we've rec'd a 50.00 per night raise at both shows where that rig is being used. Two months ago I made a decision to start buying the cb monthlies as they have more songs being requested than PHM right now in my area. Now with their hard drive deal I'm buying those instead next week because I see it as good business. Business plans change, we now have to pay sales tax on things we were exempt from in my wife's veterinary business. I've stayed in business 22 years by trying to do it right and I can sleep at night because I'm not sweating someone coming after me or one of my clients (bars). Sorry for the rant but I care about what the manu's want because what they want affects my profitabilty , song availability and many other aspects of my business.

I'm happy that your business decisions have worked out for you. Each host situation is different and how they deal with problems varies quite a bit. It depends on how successful SC is as to whether CB will be as aggressive. SC seems to be leading the way, by virtue of the fact professional legal litigation is their core business model now. I sleep just as well by not using products of manus who wish to punish hosts for using their product. There is just to much product out there to worry about one or two manus. If it gets to be too much of a hassle I have the option of just retiring from the business altogether.