Karaoke Forums

You are welcome to sell your original SC CD+G discs to anyone who will buy them. They do not need to be purchased directly from SC to be legitimate. (Note: This does NOT apply to GEM series MP3+G discs, which may not be sold without SC's permission.)

Thank you. And got that.

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Still love to sing!

We're not policing the assets of other companies. We are merely (a) requiring defendants who settle with us to delete material from their hard drives that they don't own discs for (and if they don't want to do that, they don't have to settle), and (b) getting court orders requiring defendants to show that they have permission from the copyright and trademark owners to conduct a media-shift of that material.

As has been pointed out before, taking someone from 120,000 pirated tracks to 102,000 pirated tracks by forcing a defendant to remove the SC tracks doesn't really end the unfair competition. It's been pretty easy to get judges to see the logic there.




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I'm not trying to dodge your question. I honestly don't know how a court would confront the scenario. We do include, in our complaints, language that explains why the use of pirated copies of others' tracks is detrimental to SC and its legitimate customers. The Lanham Act, § 43(a) (15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)) states as follows:

Any person who, on or in connection with any goods or services, or any container for goods, uses in commerce any word, term, name, symbol, or device, or any combination thereof, or any false designation of origin, false or misleading description of fact, or false or misleading representation of fact, which ... is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive as to the affiliation, connection, or association of such person with another person, or as to the origin, sponsorship, or approval of his or her goods, services, or commercial activities by another person ... shall be liable in a civil action by any person who believes that he or she is or is likely to be damaged by such act.

Now, that's a mouthful, but it seems to me that if Person A is falsely using Person B's trademark in a way that causes a likelihood of confusion as to Person A's affiliation with Person B, and that causes damage to Person C in some way, then Person C can use that section to bring a lawsuit against Person A.

I agree that it raises some issues that could be litigated over, and I'm not aware of any appellate decisions that are directly on point. Generally, standing is a question that is determined on a case-by-case basis. One of the ways in which we limit ourselves to try to stay within the standing requirement is that we generally only ask for injunctive relief (deletion of the tracks for which the defendant lacks original media and/or permission to have them on the hard drive) on that question, which makes the standing question easier to resolve in our favor for various reasons.[/quote][/quote][/quote]

Thank you for your response. I believe that you understand my direction of debate is to stimulate thinking from a consumer's advocate position, as opposed to a reaction of "hatred" thinking. It truly is possible to present adverse thoughts, which is a totally rational function of forums, without being pro/con Entity A or Company B, but just interested in what is proper under the law.

Now THAT'S interesting. They sued you, discovered that you were already out of business, THEN dropped the suit.

Gee, I wonder what kind of EVIDENCE of wrongdoing could they have had to sue a KJ that was no longer in the business.? Hmm, no one could have WITNESSED anything, so I would wonder what the basis of the suit was? Maybe they found a name on the internet? Yup, there's your "investigation".

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Joe, why not? He could have gone out of business between the time of the investigation and the time when the lawsuit was filed.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

My lawsuit was never filed. Only thing I got was a letter of intent to file. I had been out of the biz about 5 weeks. So yes someone somewhere said; " hey you ought to look at him too."

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Still love to sing!

There you go Joe, nothing nefarious, just the normal time lag between the investigation and lawsuit or in this case a letter of intent.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

There you go, NOTHING, Timberlea. Someone may have called him in, but he was already out. SC had nothing, no SC "investigator" witnessed ANYTHING,but they sent a letter of intent in hopes of scaring a "settlement" out of him anyway on what was probably a competitor's say-so. No investigation, as usual.

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

You know Joe, your statements are starting to become more outlandish. Between that one and the one about SC not protecting its Trademark, you're no longer grasping at straws, they left long ago.

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You can be strange but not a stranger

OK, someone take a shot at explaining this: My company does trivia two nights a week in a certain bar. They also had karaoke on Wednesday and karaoke on Friday. SC/CB certified guy on Wednesday, Friday guy was one of the companies named in SC suit nearly two years ago. They got rid of Wednesday guy, replacing him with a second show by Friday guy. I asked manager if they were concerned that they might be open to legal action from SC by using a KJ currently being sued. He said that the guy's lawyer came by and met with them and said it's OK, he has a business license so it's all good. End of issue.

Now this litigation against 5 KJs in my market continues to drag on for right at two years, with all the guys that were named still running shows at the places they were busted in - so why no litigation against the venues that continue to employ these guys and why no movement on the legal action against the KJs?

I have a possible answer - they all went out and hired lawyers and have been able to outwit Harrington in court up until now. So if the KJs have convinced the venues that everything is cool, and SC hasn't bothered to instigate action against the venues, what's the point of it all?

We normally have a two-month or so lag time between investigations and suits. It would not be unheard of for an operator to be investigated, to go out of business, then to be sued. I'm aware of about 10 of the defendants I've sued that would fit that description, not counting the ones who simply disappeared. There are a lot of karaoke hosts who operate on thin margins, particularly when you're talking about people who don't have a huge investment in their business. A guy who's put in maybe $1000 for a used sound system and $300 for a pirated hard drive and who has only a couple of shows a week is likely to be on the edge of closing up. Even for people with a more substantial investment aren't immune.

I don't know anything about this guy's specific situation. I don't know where he was operating. If I did, I could probably find out what happened. If he was contacted without an investigation, that's against our guidelines, and the appropriate people need to be made aware of it so that the problem can be corrected.

But what it very clear is that you have no knowledge whatsoever and no ability to obtain it. That doesn't stop you from making something up and stating it as fact. If you want to understand why I have a problem with you, that would be the place to start.

When someone does what you suggest, isn't that considered libel?

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-- Mark

You know I don't even know if this letter is real or not. Didn't really care as I was already out. It said notice of intent and to cease & desist. So I ceased. Never seen any of the other letters either, come to think of it. But I still got the letter if you want to investigate HL.

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Still love to sing!

You didn't indicate whether or not "Friday Guy is a known pirate, or is just a trademark infringer of SC's and CB's song tracks (not that it matters right now about CB). Could "Friday Guy" actual own all of the original SC and CB material in disc (originals) format, and just happen to be a better (or cheaper) KJ than the Wednesday night KJ?

As for having a business license, there are plenty of legit KJs out there who are doing gigs for cash, and don't have a business lincense, and don't claim anything on their taxes. Of corse, if the legit KJ has a business license, I'm sure he/she is claiming the income on his/her taxes. Now, how many pirates do you think are out there who also have a business license... and are claiming their taxes on their pirated business as well?

A near miss, Chris. This was about disc ownership-possession- for every track. When I stated that I had receipts for all, someone answered that this wasn't enough. How could I prove that I hadn't sold the disc on e-bay, or to another KJ if I lost an original disc?

The same would go for a download, for which there ISN'T any disc. How can one prove that, once downloaded, infinite copies were not made and distributed?

Therefore, if one is pro-SC methodology, one is then a believer in their "1:1" formula. That being said, no pro-SC methodology host (aka "Cheerleader") can be a download host without being a complete hippocrite.

Hence, my question: How many pro-SC methodology hosts here are also using downloads- of ANY brand- without buying a corresponding disc?

For example: Chris, do you use downloads in your show for which you have no corresponding disc OR are you "1:1"?

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

" Disc based and loving it..."

Basically James these thin margin, highly mobile small fry hosts, are not worth the expense of trying to sue are they? It is a waste of time and money for SC to pursue them. Like I have said many times only one host in my area has been approached by SC, when it was found out he had no assets the suit was dropped. That is why in Oregon SC has shifted it's focus on the venues rather than the hosts, since the venues have the deep pockets. They are easy to identify and are at a fixed location, so they are easier to serve with papers. By cutting off the source of employment you hope to get rid of your illegal hosts. Just like stopping business's from hiring undocumented workers will stop illegal immigration. Have a legal day.

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, after all this hemming and hawing and so on and so forth, HOW BOUT GETTING BACK TO THE ORIGINAL TOPIC:..........How is it that Oregon has a higher number of KJ's listed as certified on the SC site than other larger more populated states?????????????????????

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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

SwingcatKurt,

I would suspect that the reason is that there are more legal hosts willing to educate the venues and KJ's

I believe (IMO) that when SC stormed through Oregon that there were many many pirates and became Certified SC hosts by getting the Gem Series rather than getting sued, and the other states that were more hosts were legal thus not having to register as a certified host.
Then again maybe the don't want their name associated with the SC site thus told SC not to list them. I don't think it is a requirement and you can not be listed if you don't want to.

If you really get into it SC has only stormed into a few states out of 50 and it may be that the investigators (if there really are some) worked harder on this project that other states.

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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

Let's put it this way, there are very few companies that have the financial backing to "storm" all fifty states. You have to start somewhere and then continue. One state to three, to five, etc.

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You can be strange but not a stranger