Karaoke Forums

Well a good investigator will do his or her job without the subject knowing. This means whoever SC is using is very professional and have done their job properly. For SC to reveal who they use would be very stupid.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

True, Tim, but I'm just curious - mainly because a lot of this is going on in my town, apparently even in my show!

Plus I'd love to talk shop face to face with a Sound Choice rep.

And for sure, I am not a "plant" - my wife's accused me of being a vegetable before, but no, I'm not a plant.

Thanks for the chuckle on a morning when I've had too little sleep and the week from hell looking me in the eye....

k

Even though I am not a pro at investigation but have stated that our company is investigating local alleged KJ pirates, is why I post anonymously just for the record.

Here is a news article from a local Charlotte NC newspaper regarding the recent lawsuits by SC.

The article briefly mentions planned lawsuits in Virginia next.

http://mecktimes.wordpress.com/2009/10/ ... the-blues/

Unless you are licenced to be a private investigatoe, you could be in trouble with your state government as, as far as I know that every province in Canada and every state in the US require licencing.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

We are not acting as private investigators. We are remaining anonymous purly due to not letting people know that our area is being investigated.

Licensed investigators are the ones who follow up on our leads and/or reports of our suspicions. Just like if I suspect a drunk driver, I report it to the proper authorities. Those authorities can supeona me or ask for a detailed report of what I witnessed.

I respect your comments timberlea because I know you have worked in law inforcement & know that you have credibility on legal issues such as this.

Peace...

I KNEW there was something about you I liked!

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

I disagree.... you are acting EXACTLY like a private investigator... who investigates and reports to someone else. Private investigators don't walk around with a sign on them that says "Private Investigator" do they? Nope. They remain anonymous.

And don't think that you are completely anonymous; ANY licensed investigator that goes to court can be compelled to reveal the origins of their information. They are not news reporters.

Recently, an ASCAP "investigator" showed up at a club, collected information all night long and submitted it for the ensuing lawsuit against the club owner. Even though this person acted exactly like an investigator (as you claim you do) and report to someone else, ASCAP was required to reveal not only the identity of the investigator, but a copy of their bar bill as well.

Let's just say that the copy of the bar bill (proving they were actually there) is what ended the game for ASCAP and put them in a catch 22.

You can claim you "look like a duck and walk like duck but are not a duck" all you want. You're still acting as an investigator and you are not as hidden as you think you are if someone really wants to push the issue exactly like you said:

I love people who say I know you have credibility and then ignore what is said. Sorry Bud, going around to venues to see if they are legal or not is an investigation, period. You just didn't happen to walk into a place, you intentionally went in to investigate if they were legal or not. If you did that around here I would have you charged (and he talks abut pirates stealing gigs).

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You can be strange but not a stranger

In our area they are having friends or singers go around and take the photos.

Actually, I will amend the above to say that either they are using locals or friends to play investigator or else they have a real PI posing as a friend on their MySpace.

Sound Choice has stated that they are working with the FBI, at least on the issue of selling Hard Drives, so they may have their legal act together on this more than people suspect.

Also, as far as being disc based and not worrying--when our venue owner got "the letter" he got so fired up he really didn't interpret it too well. Nor did he realize this was just an organization and not a regulatory agency. He read the guidelines about determining if he had hired pirates or not and seemed to think he had to check ALL of our disc labels for the proper silk screening. He was going to just cancel karaoke altogether rather than have to deal with any of it. Luckily, being informed as to what has been going on due to the forums, we were able to put out that fire.

Leopard Lizard said:



Interesting that your club owner would get a letter and you are disc-based.... shows that it appears that anyone with a halfway decent library is suspect and most likely going to get a call or a letter.

You are very lucky that the owner took the time to listen to anything from you. Club owners here in Detroit would just boot the karaoke out the door and be done with it.

To me it sounds like declaration diffusion (i.e. media carpet bombing). Kill them all and let God sort them out kind of thing. Mail the notice to all establishments regardless whether they’re suspect or not. You never know what results you may get.

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EveningStar Entertainment & Events
JR & Michele LaPorte
Peoria, AZ

I'm sorry you feel that way timberlea....

We have just gone around to see if the Sound Choice trademark was being played on a computer & letting SC know, that's all. Now SC will decide to send in their own investigators to verify our reports.

SC themselves did investigations using their employees as stated in this news article from 10/2/09

http://mecktimes.wordpress.com/2009/10/ ... the-blues/

"This summer, the company hired a private detective and had employees visit bars and restaurants around North Carolina. They allege the KJs named in the lawsuit possessed and used unauthorized, counterfeit copies of at least one work bearing the Sound Choice trademark, which appears at the beginning and end of each song."

I guess now some North Carolina law enforcement will have to go after some Sound Choice employees since SC employees were some that visited these venues & allege that the KJs were using "counterfit copies" even though they had a P.I. - I don't know, but can the P.I. deputize SC employees or hire them as witnesses? Granted, the news article does not state whether the P.I. accompanied the SC employees or went in after the employees. If the P.I. was in fact not with them, does that show that the SC employees are breaking the law since they knowingly went to a venue to investigate or to witness what was going on in a certain establishment?

What letter did Sound Choice send your venue?

I think you should have included the next paragraph also.

"Our full-time business model is doing this,” Slep said. “We’ve pretty much stopped making music in order to go into these clubs and observe."

Sound Choice is no longer in the business of creating karaoke music. It's future income will be from litigation.

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Dave's not here.

Here is the link to the ca.gov ( State Of California ) government website in which the "BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODES" for Private Investigators is detailed for the state that our marketshare is in.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displ ... =7520-7539

It appears at first glance that you have to be compensated to be deemed a P.I. We will need to read it very thouroghly to determine whether or not that is the case. We have only reported suspicious activity to SC purly on a voluntary basis.

Also, just for the record, as far as we know, licensed P.I.'s will now be handed the ball to verify our leads if SC chooses to do so. We are done with sending leads to SC which happened back in July/August unless new suspected pirates show up in the area.

Also to timberlea: I still respect your comments. Again knowing you were in law inforcement, and your comments above, urged me to look up the law since I personally have no legal background. I will forward all this to the legal people of the company I work for.

The letter our venue owner got was from the KIAA, not Sound Choice. It was just the same form letter that appears on the KIAA site plus hints on how to know if a show is pirate. He just freaked out because he didn't know anything about it and thought more regulators were coming down on him. He also thought people had "turned him in" because some of us had been discussing the issue with him a few weeks before. I told him that they were probably just going through the entertainment ads in the paper and sending to anyone advertising karaoke.


We know a company nearby brought in the KIAA but don't know if they would bother coming out where we are. But we told our venue owner that if they did, he would be the only bar left with karaoke.

Hmmmm, I suspect things have really started to move in the Raleigh, NC area regarding pirates.
I've had contacts three times over the past week by local venues (including one chain) looking for KJ's to hire. I believe several of these venues had shows run by pirates; that the venues have been contacted as part of the Sound Choice investigations; and the venues are now scrambling to find legit KJ's.
This could get very interesting.