Karaoke Forums

What do you think a pro karaoke host is doing this for? Money - well ok most of the hosts, some do it for beer, but that is still compensation for a job - ie commerce.

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My view is they send an investigator to a show that is run by computers, and see a lot of sound choice being used.

I agree that in this environment it is a legit cause for suspicion, there are a lot of pirates out there.

Sound choice has said publicly that they will not go after format shifters alone. Now that may be a recent statement after your case began, so the lawyer you were forced to hire may have swollowed SC's arguement on the legality of format shifting.
Now I bet SC would not want a case merely involving format shifting to come to court. That issue has NOT been settled yet in caselaw for karaoke, and they know that their line of arguement is nowhere near as strong as their assertations. They know that if this is ever brought to court for for format shifting alone, they have a very good chance of losing their talking ponts.

They send an ivestigator to see the origional disks.

If I show them that I do have several hundred disks from sound choice, that should end the reasonable cause for suspicion.

The fact that I have many sound choice disks can be verified in 10 or even 5 minutes. That should end reasonable suspicion.
To verify that I have every disk for all 20k (inc dups) songs is not an easy task, of course my name spelling and formats are going to be a little different from everyone else, so it may take days of work to find any errors/or one or two illegal songs, even if they exist.

The point is that after the first 10 minutes it either becomes a case of obvious guilt or a witch hunt. Even one disk missing could be over a thousand dollars at the cost of $750 a song. Recently I found a misplaced disk or two in unrelated papers and I assume many of us may be in that situation. Having my disks less than perfectly organized is NOT a crime.

My point is that any investigation that involves forcing me to hire a lawyer and invade my house for 3 days is unwarrented. I will gladly show someone I have x sound choice disks (I think x= around 400 at the moment), and that can be done in 5 minutes. I don't know about the rest of you guys but I am not eager to have to hire an atourney and spend 3+ days on having myself investigated. With the cost of lost time at my day job and atourney fees that could easily be thousands of dollars. EVEN IF I AM FOUND TO BE TOTALLY COMPLIANT.

Face it nearly all of the pirates out there cant show 2 SC disks that they own, much less several hundred SC disks. Why does SC not concentrate on them.

As for KIAA they are like the "Insurance" guy from the mob that shows up with two husky friends one with a gas can and the other with a baseball bat. All that they are doing is making you agree to the inconvenience of an investigation in advance of a lawsuit. In my view this is NOT a normal cost of doing business. It is extortion pure and simple. It can easliy take an hour or more to verify each 1000 songs, so why should I agree to an audit that wastes even a day of my time, and pay for it as well out of my own pocket. No I don't want some random investigator sitting in my house when I am not there, so it will take up MY time.

We have a right to choose NOW, but if we have already invested thousands of dollars in SC disks, and a technology of computers that seemed to be accepted, then it is not easy to walk away from the investment. Knowing what I know now, I would think long and hard about buying SC disks if I was starting from the beginning. The chance of being investigated is increasing and the cost of time and legal fees such an investigation could be $2000+ for the innocent, and $10,000 for the guilty is not a cost of doing business that I would look forward to, even for the innocent.

If you're running a disc only show are they still looking to audit you?

Sounds like the only one's being audited or have the potential to be audited are those who have switched formats. So if you choose to switch formats for convenience the downside is that you may have to incur and audit. Still sounds like a choice to me.

I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's still a choice.

Wonder if all this will have any impact on Compuhost et al

I just have to say that if SC goes around forcing all of their legal customers to spend thousands of their own dollars in money and time to prove they are legit, they will loose a lot of business in the long run.

If they compensate to a reasonable extent the unjustly accused for the time and inconvenience then they would be viewed as a fair company.

The fact is that the majority of KJs are probably now computer/hard drive based. The time of disks is fadeing and I doubt many who have enterd the business in the last 3 years know of any other way.

Instead of forcing KJs pay money into SC's extortion gang with the KIAA, they should pay give LEGIT KJs who pass KIAA audits 10 or so free disks a year. Then it might be an organization that KJs would want to join not be forced into by a court settlement.

Once again I ask, is there an organization that is actively pursuing only the pirates whose names and contact info they have been provided with multiple times in the past? I don't think so. Seems to me it would be a better use of their time to first pick up the known perpetrators than to visit 6000 shows and snag the innocents in the net as well. This is the most frustrating and ridiculous modus operandi I have ever heard of.

Some of it might be from reporting in. Not every report that is given in is real. Some are disgruntled former employees trying to get back at their former boss for firing them or competition trying to get rid of the one quality legal company so they can get their pirate butt into the gigs. It happens. So just going after the reported ones isn't the answer either.

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Dr. Fred:

Nobody invaded KJAthena's house for 3 days. She went to where she stores her CD's picked them up and placed in various places around her house so it would be easy for her to find for showing. SC audited her via Skype. They would ask to see a certain disc and she would show it to them via her computer camera. I'm trying to remember what she said from the other forum but I don't think it took her over a couple of hours.

Athena: Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is what I read.

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Then go back to running an original manufacturers disc based show, with no burns, removing all computer gear completely, then you would have no problems whatsoever with suspicions generating into lawsuits.

Unfortunatly in the civil suit world, you are guilt until proven innocent unlike in the criminal world where you are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

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Of we can spend our money towards discs from companies that would be more careful in their investigations to insure that 1:1 compliant customers are not named in lawsuits simply for being PC based.

Not easy I know, but when no effort is made...

"Dr. Fred:

Nobody invaded KJAthena's house for 3 days. She went to where she stores her CD's picked them up and placed in various places around her house so it would be easy for her to find for showing. SC audited her via Skype. They would ask to see a certain disc and she would show it to them via her computer camera. I'm trying to remember what she said from the other forum but I don't think it took her over a couple of hours.

Athena: Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think this is what I read."

That is correct the audit itself only took about 2 hours. The retreiving and organizing to speed up the process then returning discs to archived location took 3 days.

KJAthena

My mistake if I misred the event, ..

no problem...should have made it more clear

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I think that once you have proven your innocence, you should be reimbursed for your time.

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

But that would be the right thing to do!

UH no more than any other accusation.
If you get a traffic ticket and go to court to prove your innocence and win you don't get paid.
If you get sued and you win you don't get paid.
If you show up for you job and the boss says "Your Fired" you don't get paid for that day.

Lots of examples

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The difference with being accused of a crime by the government is that if the government tries too many innocent people, that govenrment will be voted out of office in a democracy. Therefore for a government to survive in a democracy the police will only (ideally) investigate when there is very strong evidence of guilt (or a very serious crime). Now I am talking ideals here, but there is a lot of outcry by the public if the government spends too much time investigating innocent people. THe public does not tolerate abuse of excessive investigations. The principle is very important, and is enshrined in the 4th amendment to the US constitution. "Unreasonable search and siezure".

With this case we have a situation where they pretty much pick a KJ at random, and then subject that KJ to 1000 times more examination than other KJs are subjected to. Not only that they attempt to do a exhaustive examination in the hope of finding a few illegal songs among the book of a KJ that appears mostly leagal after just a few minutes of examination. I think that long before the investigation was complete the case extended into Unreasonable search, with no guiding principle suggesting guilt except that an assumption of guilt at the start.

Costs to defendants are rare when they prevail, whether it be Small Claims Court or Supreme Court. It is just part of the system. How many people do you know ever got reimbursed for their time for defending their case?

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