Karaoke Forums

Hey all,

I've been perusing the forums and it's quite obvious that karaoke piracy is a huge problem. I'm surprised by this because of how aggressively RIAA has gone after music pirates. I recognize that commercial music piracy is much bigger business than karaoke music piracy, but the fact that these pirates are flaunting their piracy publicly and everyone seems to be able to identify the local pirates would lead me to believe that it would be relatively simple to stamp out. I'd like to get a better sense of where the efforts are breaking down.

The way I see it, the following are the players in these efforts:

Stakeholders
KJs
Manufacturers
Musicians/Songwriters

Violators
Pirate KJs
Venue Owners/Managers

Enforcers
Police
Courts

In theory, the following is how I would imagine the efforts would escalate and eventually be resolved:

- KJ recognizes pirate.
- KJ educates/scares pirate.
- KJ educates/scares Venue Owner/Manager.
- KJ contacts Police.
- KJ contacts Manufacturer.
- Manufacturer takes legal action (civil/criminal) against Pirate/Venue Owner/Manager.
- Musician/Artist/RIAA? takes legal action (civil/criminal) against Pirate/Venue Owner/Manager.

At any point in this chain, these actions should shut down pirates, but it sounds like even though it's happening, it's way too slow and more pirates enter the market than leave it. In a perfect world, any one of these actions would be an effective deterrent, especially as world travels and people get scared of jail or being sued. Beyond that, it seems like a coalition of attorneys could get rich with how easy it is for them to identify the pirates (from the KJ community) and how clear-cut the legality of pirating music is, especially considering the added visibility provided by performing the music publicly is.

That said, why is this system not working?

It's not a perfect world mate.

Some hosts don't want to be whistle blowers. Basically the manus are the ones that have to go after the pirates, there are just a handful of these (manus), there are hundreds, well thousands of pirates.

Education on karaoke piracy is almost non existent. Yeah, on the manu sites but who goes there? Media coverage of this would go a long way, but from my vantage point, haven't seen anything, I'm sure there's been some, but not much. I alerted my local newspaper of the issue, they never even replied back. Funny, they have "the best of" annual awards. One is for best karaoke venue. The one that won last year,,, had a pirate. Maybe they felt like they got caught with egg on their face and that's why they didn't reply to my email.

I'll tell you right now, if "best karaoke venue" is on the ballot next year, I will raise holy hell publicly on their blog site to alert all the voters that this is an issue. Then see if the newspaper gives their backing this time.

_________________
KingBing Entertainment C'mon Up! I have a song for you!!! [font=MS Sans Serif][/font]

You forgot the final step in the process.

Pirate KJ/Venue Owner shoots reporting KJ or bad mouths him enough to other bar owners so that he will never get another gig.

_________________
I like everyone when I first meet them. If you don't like me that's not my problem it's YOURS!
A stranger is a friend you haven't met yet

Nobody likes a RAT. Ask Henry Hill.

Ha ha.
Henry Hill.
I wonder what else he will start selling on ebay.

Policing piracy won't ever work. That genie is out of the bottle.

My day business is in game software and piracy there is a huge issue even with console titles. We've found that tracking down and attempting to prevent piracy is simply a losing proposition.

What's being done to prevent it an incentive policy. Make some value add to the customer and entice them to purchase your product. In all candor I am unsure how to apply this to karaoke with the current installed base.

For example, one item I can think of is a streaming subscription service; youkaraoke from the manufacturers. Charge a reasonable rate and give access to their entire library. Yes there are technical challenges but all the solutions are already available. The service could also be sold to the home user for the same rate. However this requires a fundamental change in how we get our media delivered.

I can hear the disk based hosts gnashing their teeth at the thought