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Let's think about this... KIAA is just for America, not Canada, not UK etc etc. The article states only 2 legal sites are paying royalties...per the USA licensing agencies, well if the sites are not US based then they don't need to! Examples being selectatrack, SBI who are UK based and adhering to the UK and EU laws (which are a bit more sensible and less draconian than the ones here). Common sense says you can confirm with manufacturer if the website is a licensed reseller or not.

Now, we all know that Sound Choice and PHM do not license their tracks for download anywhere so any site selling those is going to be somewhat less than legal. Tricerasoft claims to be MCPS (UK) licensed and for all I know they may base their operations there and just charge in USD$. They are definitely not US - based because the charges to my credit card always attract a foreign transaction fee. I'm fairly convinced they are legal for at least Sunfly since they have the tracks available before the CDs have even been pressed, per the Sunfly download policy.

They may have signed a licensing deal with Panorama before they went out of business, the deal may still stand and the administrators could be using the revenue to trickle pay the judgment fees against them or they may have simply relocated to a less restrictive country and paid the more sensible blanket licensing fees.

I can quite legally buy a song from another country that has been legally licensed in that country for sale either on a physical CD and have it shipped here or as a digital download.

A problem I have with the KIAA mission is that there is a VERY grey area on what THEY consider legal which they do not (to my knowledge) make easily accessible. To me it seems that there are a select few manufacturers (who I still buy discs from!) who are on the KIAA board or similar who wish to (ab)use their position and try to steer all business in their direction. I could be wrong (don't sue for defamation!).

Wow.. bit of a rant there. I'd like the idea of the KIAA but I think we need a 'KJ'AA to stand up against the 'I' in KIAA. Or... just ignore them completely and stay honest in your own way.... but stay honest!

- J

I am a member of the US Karaoke Alliance but not KIAA. Yes I use UK sites as the greedy in this county has once again driven an entire industry abroad. A strong national karaoke association might have prevented that but the corps were too busy suing each other and ignoring their customer base.

The arguments on this forum are still heated and havnt solved anything yet because the radicals want to keep everything stirred up. They have done a great disservice to this forum and our industry in general.

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The most truthful quote of the whole article:

"The entire DJ industry lives in the gray area of law… "

A second that last post.

Although I have not frequented any DJ sites of late, when I did do so a couple of years back, copyright matters never came up on the threads I was interested in, where it comes up on this forum frequently