Karaoke Forums

Alan there is no answer to stopping the piracy problem, it's too big, and too ingrained, most people don't see it as piracy, just free stuff. The only way to combat pirate KJ's is to be smarter and better than they are. As a host it is hard to compete if your skills are sub par, especially if the pirate has better equipment and is able to provide their service at a cheap price. Even if Jim were to try and do something, the recent court set backs have shown that trademark infringement is not going to win the day. There is no confusion in the market place, and the pirates are not knocking off imitation discs, there is no place to go with this. Some KJ's have attempted to inform venues in their areas of pirate activities and ended up losing work for their troubles. The only solution is to compete and prove to venue owners you have a superior product, quite frankly what they always ask is if you have a following? Bottom line they want someone who will fill their place and spend money, not sip soda and water all night.

Rather than reporting these, if you would send me the links at jim@phxep.com, I will get them taken down. eBay listens more carefully to the people who own the rights, and we have been stepping up our efforts lately to file formal complaints with eBay.

I'm sure Ebay is shaking in their boots.

It does not cost "thousands of dollars" to investigate a single KJ, and I have never said that it did.

Investigating a KJ is, generally speaking, much easier than investigating a hard drive seller. We do go after KJs, but we also go after the venues that hire them. Hard drive sellers operate largely anonymously, so it takes a huge amount of time and access to expensive databases to track them down effectively. We also have to handle these cases in-house or pay the attorney hourly because of the poor odds of recovery. (Unlike some people, we don't ask our attorneys to work for free on non-revenue cases.) We may be required to post a bond to get our injunction--and that can be anywhere from $1000 to $10,000, and maybe more. All in, we might spend $20,000 to $30,000 to get a paper judgment to stop one hard drive seller. It's just not a productive use of scarce resources in most cases.



We have attorneys actively prosecuting cases against operators and venues in Riverside County. The fact that you've never met the targets means...well, it's a big place.

Don't be thick. We're not suing eBay. Unlike some organizations, eBay actually seems to want to cooperate with IP owners to keep pirated materials off their service.

I'll keep my eyes open for them, I'm sure judge Wright would just love to see another batch of your frivolous lawsuits.

In a recent lawsuit against a venue, the claim is made:

If a single venue conducting karaoke shows is causing that much damage by simply putting on a karaoke show, imagine the multiples of that damage a single hard drive seller is causing with each drive sold.
With that kind of monetary loss I would expect plugging the hole of that money drain to be a priority even if it only results in an injunction to stop the sales.

_________________
KNOW THYSELF