Karaoke Forums

There is a plan. It's a $150 base rate, plus additional for certifying multiple or very large systems (that depends on several factors, including the time involved, the number of systems certified, etc.).

If you want a departure from that, SC will consider it, but it's on a negotiated basis. Factors would include the size of the system (based on the number of discs), the location of the audit, the availability of a remote audit, the financial condition of the operator, the availability of an auditor, the need for additional certified operators in an area, what the operator is willing to pay, and so forth. I can't give you a precise formula because it is multi-factorial.

It took a seventh try on the question, but you finally answered it. Why all of the previous cloak and dagger? The cost is $150.oo no matter how many SC discs the host has, unless it's a larger quantity than some unknown number . As in any business dealings, everyone is free to attempt to negotiate, but there is no specific discount for low disc quantities. How hard was that?


You lost your status as an honest broker of information, whatever it might have been, when you posted this:



I have no idea why that would have any bearing on my honesty. I have never claimed to be unbiased in these debates and am no more biased than you. I'm sure everyone here is aware of my opinions regarding the way SC is currently doing business. You would happy if SC won a legal proceeding, and I would be happy if they lost. I see no problem. Two sides of the same coin.

I stand by the statement because it it is an honest reflection of my feelings on the matter.


You cannot hold that view and expect me to cooperate with you for any reason. Because of what you posted, I am forced to regard the questions you ask as the prelude to a future attack and to regard the statements you make as intended to harm my client.

First, I am not here to attack anyone, but to gain information. However, I WILL call out both descrepancies and what I consider unethical acts if and when they come to light. Also, I wasn't asking you to cooperate with ME, but to answer a question that SC's CUSTOMERS have been asking. I did not and will not glean any benefit from your reply. You were helping THEM.


I don't have time to go through hundreds of your posts to find the specific reference. You have stated it on here, and you allude to it constantly.[/quote]


You don't have time to go through hundreds of posts, yet you claim that I allude to it constantly, specifically mentioning Kurt by name. Good luck with that. Still can't fugure out why you brought it up....Debate distraction, I guess.

_________________
"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

Actually, I've answered that question numerous times on here prior to this one.



Not very hard, which is why I've repeatedly stated that the list price is $150 but negotiable under certain circumstances. It has never been hard for most people to understand me when I've said that.



Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the term "honest broker." By saying that you are not an "honest broker," I was not calling you dishonest. I was saying that you were a biased intermediary between SC and the customers you pretend to be "helping."

I don't have a problem with your bias. You're entitled to it. I also admit to my own.

But you and I are not "two sides of the same coin."

Let's remind ourselves of your exact words:



I'm perfectly willing to take you at your word. And the specific word we should look at is "anything." When you say "anything," I believe you. Anything means anything at all, regardless of merit. The context of your remarks makes it clear that you did in fact mean, for example, a court action resulting in a negative outcome for SC, even if on the merits the outcome should have been different.

And that makes you and me different, Joe. Most people think that lawyers exist to do their clients' bidding. Some lawyers may approach things that way, but I never have. My role and responsibility as a lawyer is to help my client achieve lawful, reasonable business goals through legal means. Simply put, I'm not comfortable with "anything," as you clearly are. If I believed my client was pursuing a course of action that was unreasonably unfair, or of questionable legality, or wrong on the merits, I have an obligation to counsel that client to correct his approach and to withdraw from the representation if I cannot convince him to do so.

Fortunately, in SC I have a client who agrees with me on those points. For the entire time I have represented SC, almost four years now, Kurt has been focused on one goal: recovering from the damage that piracy has caused his company. His initial approach to every defendant has been a moderate one--show me that you didn't steal, or pay for what you stole and for the costs we incurred in pursuing you. He has shown compassion to a lot of people who stole from him. I have rarely seen him inclined to be unreasonable, but when he has been we have always been able to come to a reasonable agreement.

When we started this project, we were facing a culture of piracy. Fully 95% of the demand for SC's product--and, contrary to the naysayers, that demand remains high--was being satisfied by people who stole it. Let's put that another way: for every 20 copies of an SC track that were played at commercial shows before we started, only one of them was a paid copy. Those ratios simply don't work for anyone.

Our approach has been the only thing over a period of about 10 years that has made reasonable progress toward reducing the piracy ratio or restoring SC's business.

For a long time, I have tolerated, even indulged, your negativism. You have proven to be remarkably impervious to facts. Your arguments bear the earmarks of a man who decides what his conclusion is and cherry-picks information to support that conclusion--and, where there are insufficient true facts to support the conclusion, you simply fabricate them.

No more. You aren't interested in the truth. You are interested in accumulating ammunition for your fabulist views. And, contrary to your contention, you aren't trying to help SC's customers. You plainly don't care about SC's actual customers. SC's actual customers, the ones who buy and believe in the product, are clamoring for more of it, not hoping for SC's demise. They aren't hoping for "anything" that would harm SC, but--and I am just taking you at your word--you are.

You--and others who share your view of things--often complain that SC brands those who oppose it as "pirates." That's not precisely correct. Only actual thieves are pirates. We have always recognized that it is possible to dissent from our position and yet not sympathize with pirates. Part of my role here has been to engage constructively with those people, and that engagement has produced methods that address those concerns in ways that have improved our process by making it more fair.

But you aren't one of those people, and while I should have recognized it much sooner than I did, your statement, quoted above, has made it crystal-clear to me in a final and irredeemable way. You are (probably) not a pirate--I say "probably" because while I assume you are telling the truth about your operations, I have not verified it--but your approach is objectively pro-pirate. I say that not easily or lightly, but on the merits as I see them. I say that because your approach, perhaps accidentally laid bare, is focused on wishing harm--merited or not--to the one organization that has done anything of significance in the last few years to stem the pirate tide in the karaoke industry.

Two sides of the same coin? No, we're definitely not. You don't see me wishing a pirate into bankruptcy, or hoping a hurricane wipes out his house, or wanting him to be framed for a crime he didn't commit. You don't even see me hoping that a defendant gets undeserved rough treatment from a judge. I am solely focused on convincing pirates to pay for what they stole and to reform themselves, and on forcing them through legal means to do so if they refuse to stop stealing. If a pirate wins the lottery I couldn't care less. I'm definitely not up for "anything," and you are.

One more thing: Just in case anyone was unclear about why I am here, I will quote from my very first post on this board, on August 3, 2011:

It is my plan, periodically, to provide information, answer questions, and respond to concerns. We aren't doing this to squelch dissent. It is possible for reasonable minds to disagree about what is going on in the karaoke industry. Not everyone will view what I'm doing positively. Based on some of the comments I've read, it's clear that there are some people out there who aren't fans of my work. I can live with that, but it's also important that the factual information be accurate.

Those words were true then, and they are true today, and they will be true for as long as I am here.

Actually, I AM here to support the truth. On the other hand, I have come to feel that you have been somewhat disingenuous.

In case you haven't noticed, in the past I have taken pains to explain to those who truly attack you that you are actually just doing the job that a lawyer is supposed to do for their client.

Unfortunately, after long consideration, I have found this to be inaccurate. Why? The current (IMHO completely unethical) business plan that SC follows could not have been the brainchild of Kurt alone. It required a certain legal expertise for which he hasn't the training. I now believe that this plan was a joint effort between YOU and Kurt. Therefore, rather than just the interests of your client at heart, I believe you are following your OWN agenda.

While I admit to a lack of any inside knowledge of your income agreement from SC, you have stated that you do not receive your standard hourly business rate from them, and you have also stated that you spend about 80 hrs per week on their cases. This leads me to believe that you are getting paid on a per case basis. Hence, your own agenda.

While I am certainly biased against SC's current methodology, I gain absolutely nothing by feeling and posting that way. On the other hand, anytime you can convince the uneducated to "play it SC's way" you may well profit from it.


Just my thoughts, of course. Once again, I do not have full knowledge of your business arrangement, and freely admit it.

As for SC recovering monies lost through piracy: The problem continues to be that SC is not targeting those who stole from them. It seems that SC feels that since pirates (Music Thieves) stole from them, they then have every right to use what I and many others consider unethical practices to intimidate money from others. While I'm real sorry that SC can't ( or won't) use professional investigation to to pinpoint those who actually stole from them, I'm not so sure that simply suing anyone they can find hosting from a PC would be considered the ethical choice.

Quoting you: ".... I am solely focused on convincing pirates to pay for what they stole and to reform themselves, and on forcing them through legal means to do so if they refuse to stop stealing" Really? When do you plan to start targeting PIRATES? Unless you focus on pirates, I don't really see how you might achieve the above.

I understand that you think that this is ethical-I just happen to disagree. In the beginning, I was all for SC getting what was due them- until I found out how they were planning to go about it-not targeting the guilty, but causing hardships for their customers, their customers' venues, and in general having a negative impact on the industry that I love. Now, it's not a matter of wishing them bankrupt, but rather that they shut up and go away.

You, being you, felt that you had to state the following "but your approach is objectively pro-pirate." Normally, I abstain from personal negative statements, but in this case I will make an exception- I believe you are lying outright for effect or distraction from another weak debate point. Simply put, I have stated several times that I include anti-piracy literature with all of my mailings- I just don't sully that literature with any association with SC. Your statement, unsurprisingly, is false.

I find it saddening that while I try to keep personal statements out of these debates, you seem to continue to use them as an avenue of distraction.

You are correct- we are not two sides of the same coin. That thought makes me happy, and hopefully a good example for my children and grandchildren.

_________________
"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

But Joe, they are using the only legal means of telling the difference between the legal computer host and the illegal one. Sue them all and sort them out later. Unless the host has their discs with them there is no way to tell the pirate from the true customer.

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

Sue them all and sort them out later? What the hell kind of business plan is that?

It seems that this approach, as identified by a recent California judge's assessment, being "legal" is yet to be determined. One might conclude that aspects of trademark fair use, as currently defined, might cover such use, even in a commercial setting. I believe it is safe to conclude that the current state of any given LAW as it relates to a given subject takes precedence over a given company's POLICY. There is also something to say for a given company's liability for pursuing an alleged infringer if it is determined to be unwarranted under the law at the time of the pursuit. It seems logical that using an argument, especially one that is not directly related, as an alternative means to an end would be frowned upon in federal courtrooms. It also seems possible that if a determination is made that benefit was derived from such activity, restitution could be in order, perhaps on a class-action level...

1) Danny, I never claimed that what they are doing is illegal. I DO claim that it is completely unethical.

"Sue them all and sort them out later" REALLY? Legal does not equate to ethical.

2) There IS a way- it's just not as cheap, down & dirty.:

Professional investigation costs a bit more, but it always yields the facts. If SC actually sues more than a very few hosts singly, they might actually begin to try it, as single filings on the "hit and hope" basis that they have been using could get expensive when they find the KJ to be clear of wrongdoing.

Had it been me, I would not have been penny-wise and pound-foolish. I would have paid for a real investigation, targeting multi-riggers first (more money), then sued once I was sure of my case.

When I say sued, I mean for bigger money- since I would KNOW what they would take all available funds AND put them out of business. Not only do I get a sure money win, I am nailing someone who actually DID steal from me, AND by putting him out of business I send a real message.

SC went for quantity over quality, but to do that they had to cut corners. Rather than pay straight fees,they had to promise a piece of the action to the subcontractors. This, as ANYONE could have guessed, encouraged the subcontractors to cut corners as well in hopes of increasing quantity even further. You saw how that turned out.

They make some quick short-term money ( not enough) on some settlements, yes. But they look like jerks in court (per judges, not me), they send no message in regard to piracy other than if you pay them off, have at it.

They also seem to have subcontracted to folks who may do unto SC because they feel SC might do unto them, and SC claims they never received a LOT of the funds that they feel they deserve from those cases.

I still wouldn't count out a suit aimed at SC from the many KJ they have been unable to follow through on.

They are also alienating there own market.

Even were I to put personal ethics aside, their current actions have equated to a truly lousy long range business plan.

Of course, that is assuming that they are thinking long range at all.

Danny, they came up with a flawed plan, they implemented it, and it's own simple exposure is crapping it out. They blew it.

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"No Contests, No Divas, Just A Good Time!"

" Disc based and loving it..."

There is virtually nothing in this post that hasn't been demonstrated to be false over the past four years.

Our process has never been "sue them all and sort it out later." Ever.

Ironically, the professional investigator firm SC hired has been the source of nearly all of the problems to date.

Three things to remember:

1. Joe's stated purpose is to cause whatever harm he can to SC.
2. Joe has no first-hand knowledge of any actual facts.
3. He's been wrong about everything.

It's what judge Wright called it a bunch of trolls filing mass shakedown lawsuits, in order to pressure the majority of hosts or venues to pay off SC to make them go away. If that plan doesn't work at least they have stirred the pot and maybe convinced some hosts or venues to go ahead and license GEM in order to head of future legal problems. Either way SC is gambling on a pay day. Have a blessed day.

That is not what judge Wright said James, yes there have been abuses in this legal process of SC. I know you want to blame the agents hired by SC, but after all SC did hire them, and is totally responsible for their actions. Just like you want to hold venues responsible for the hosts they hire, since they have the deep pockets. That is why SC in Oregon lawsuits have shifted to the venues and away from the hosts, go where the money is. This whole legal process is based on the idea that a single company can turn an industry on it's ear, since the government won't take a hand in your project. One manu is not bigger than the industry, and most hosts and venues will simply stop using your product, since you continue on your quest alone. Not even PR that is supposed to be protecting CB is actively starting new suits. They realize like other manus it will be a net money loser. No host has the first-hand knowledge that you have, we are all at a disadvantage as far as information, is concerned. There is nothing out here to dispute what you say on a daily basis. The proof in the pudding will be when SC finally collapses in the next year or two. I'm still waiting to see who leaves the business first me or SC. Have a legal day.

So Mr. Harrington SC has never sued anyone and then had to back up and recant? KJAthena would you care to comment on this? And by the way, isn't DannyG one of your certified guys? He's the one that said this in an earlier post, not Joe.

I am all disc and have been audited and certified by Kurt Slep himself at his hotel room with his oregon investigators present. Also the all disc bar i DJ'd at was audited and certified......yet to see the two certificates come yet.......still WAITING!!!

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"You know that I sing the Blues and I do not suffer fools. When I'm on that silver mic, it's gonna cut ya, just like a knife"-The SWINGCAT

When did you have this done, and if you don't mind answering, how much did it cost you to do it?

BTW, I don't see you listed in SC's website for Certified KJs. Here's what I saw for Oregon:

The KJs or Venues listed below (in alphabetical order by state, then city) have successfully completed the VOLUNTARY audit process for Sound Choice®, and additionally if so indicated, for Chartbuster Karaoke. At the time of certification, the karaoke library presented by the applicant was found to be strictly adherent to the guidelines set forth by Sound Choice® for the use of their intellectual content and if indicated, the guidelines for Chartbuster Karaoke.

State/ City/ Business Name/ Contact/ Audit Date

OR Beaverton / MSN Entertainment / Michael Northcutt 03/23/12

OR Canby / Karaoke With Sal / Sal "Kjmann" Esquivel 4/18/12

OR Central Point / Be a Star Karaoke / David Lee 6/04/12

OR Gold Hill / / Robert Arbogast 7/23/12

OR Gresham / Sterling Karaoke / Howard Stiff 10/10/11

OR Mount Angel /Nightlife Karaoke / 8/13/12

OR Mulino / Kara'Roy'Ke / Roy Teeples 5/13/12

OR Newberg / "A Song For You" Mobile Music Services /
Ramsay "RC" I Cowlishaw, III 2/2/13

OR Portland / Big Mike's Entertainment / Michael Heppner 6/25/10

OR Salem / Artistic Voices Entertainment / Randall D Key 5/21/12

OR Salem / Capital City Entertainment/I-5 Entertainment LLC. /
Dane Shepherd 9/30/11

OR Springfield / Mobile DJ Karaoke, LLC ./ Jared Ritzer 12/15/12

OR Springfield / Sassy Patty / Patricia Richardson 3/6/13


Below is the list of KJ/Hosts who wanted to be posted as being GEM Series Licensees (in alphabetical order by state, then city) who have purchased the entire Sound Choice GEM Series.

State City Company Name Contact Person

OR Beaverton MSN Entertainment Michael Nothcutt
OR Canby Karaoke with Sal Salvador Esquivel
OR Central Point Be A Star Karaoke David Montgomery
OR Central Point Willis Entertainment Larry Willis
OR Grants Pass Legacy Entertainment Pamela Dulong
OR Hillsboro Sundown Entertainment Michael Hulett
OR McMinnville Play it Again Melanie Barnes
OR Medford Fosters Entertainement Ryan Foster
OR Medford Maxy's Buffett, LLC Fang Hau Lu
OR Medford Kamstar Karaoke Kamee Hall
OR Medford Boo Inc. dba The Gypsy Clay Baernson
OR Milwaukie The RH Factor Rick Harlow
OR Oregon City On Track Entertainment Tauren Blackman
OR Reedsport JL Entertainment Lawrence Warner
OR Salem Artistic Voices Entertainment, Karaoke & More Randall Key
OR Salem Badger Karaoke David Badger
OR Scappoose Wigwam Tavern Karen Harris
OR Scappoose WigwamTavern Karen Harris
OR Springfield Patricia Richardson Patricia Richardson
OR Springfield Mobile DJ Karaoke, LLC Jared Ritzer
OR Tigard Lu's Buffett Xu Jian Lu
OR Tualatin Lee's Kitchen Ye Min Li
OR Turner Bill's Karaoke Bill Stuhr