Karaoke Forums

I am not saying it is right for people to buy those discs for home use. Not at all. It does hurt KJs even more when they venture out with those drives at cut rates and flood the morket. It does hurt some light manu sales. But I feel strongly the comment that they are "harming the entire fabric of karaoke" is way over blown.

Here is another one of those analogies...
Let's say I frequent a gun range. The gun range bought the guns and owns the guns and I pay to go there and shoot their guns. I don't have a gun myself and will never buy one, it's way to expensive.
But all of a sudden, I get a change to buy a gun off the street for cheap. I've got land so I set up my own targets and I invite friends over.

Have I harmed gun sales? I say only slightly, as the gun range lost business and doesn't reinvest in other guns. What I have really harmed is the gun range business, correct? Now let's say the gun maker finds out and confronts me about this gun I didn't buy from them. They slap my hand, sell me a "legit" gun and I can now compete with the gun range I used to patron! Who wins? First, me. next, the gun maker, he sold a gun he never would other wise. Who is the loser and by how many times?

Those drives are hurting KJs and it's not just once.

But they didn't "force" you to buy a gun from them or never be able to shoot one again.

Well, for poops and potties, lets just say they thought they could and tried.

Ok, but let's also say that gun you bought off the street is stolen to start with.
Just like home users, the original music content is already stolen (pirate copied) so the damage is already done, whether or not they would have bought the music otherwise is moot.

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So you are saying theft is okay.

-Chris

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-Chris

I agree that whether they bought or not is moot. Where it is moot, however, is at the end user\kj level.

I've never said that and never will and you know it. The drives are wrong. Stealing the content is wrong.

Maybe this illustration will help.

When that gun is produced, it is unique. There is only one of that gun. It is sold by the manufacturer to someone and each time it changes hands the person before no longer has it. The person buying it doesn't have any way of keeping a copy of the gun or making more copies to give away or sell. If someone else wants that gun they have to go to the OEM to get it.

When a karaoke disc or digital file is produced, it too is unique. There is only one of that file. It is sold by the manufacturer to someone. But technology allows us to reproduce an identical version of that object. When people do this and then give away or sell that object, it robs the OEM of income.

In other words -

If 1000 people want that gun, then 1000 sales are attributed back to the OEM. The OEM can recoup the cost of R&D, manufacturing, shipping, etc. and hopefully make a profit - which is why they sell them in the first place.

If 1000 people want the karaoke CD or file, only one sale has to be made and then illegal copies could be made leaving the manufacturer with no way to recoup their costs and certainly no way to profit - which is why they sell them in the first place.



-Chris

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-Chris

Let's say the gun I bought was taken apart, copied and reproduced. It's no where near the same quality, but it is a gun that works almost as good.

That is intellectual property theft and counterfeiting, the same as making copies of the karaoke music.

-Chris

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-Chris

Which is what I am going for.. It is definately illegal, I may or may not have known, I did end up buying a gun that I would not have bought. I did harm the gun range business no matter how you look at it, and I may have even helped the gun manu when the illegalness (new word!) was "pointed out" to me in or before court.

Also keep in mind that with practically all retail distribution, if there is a reseller involved, they have a markup. If people steal the karaoke music, they are harming the OEM and the distributors. They are granting access to pirate KJ's which in turn flood the market with low cost competition and crapioke. Home user who download from pirates sites or buy pirate drives get no guarantee of quality and certainly no legal recourse if the product doesn't meet their expectations.

THAT is harming the entire fabric of karaoke......

-Chris

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-Chris

Unlike in "The Matrix", ignorance is not bliss.

-Chris

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-Chris

Maybe......I bought a gun and shot the screen out of my laptop after reading 4 pages of this post...

I completely agree that it hurts the OEMs. Home users that would have bought a few CDs from OEMs are not. KJ Pirates that own the drives are able to go around the OEMS and buy direct when they get caught. That is the case today.

Need a gun? I know a guy?
Kidding...

No I bought a cheap one from a guy named Bill on Craigslist.
Boy it was a real steal...

Chris,

Working for Microsoft, you should be able to answer these questions. If Microsoft cannot stop the piracy of their operating systems and core office products, how in the world can one or two karaoke producers hope to make a dent in the piracy of theirs? Does Microsoft catch someone pirating their property and then offer to finance their entire Office Suite and Windows 8 for the thief?

Because that's what we have in this "industry"

Piracy can't be stopped with the current methods of distribution. Microsoft and many other software companies do pursue counterfeiters as well as companies that don't license properly. Usually a settlement is involved that is not too different from what Sound Choice does - pay a fine, get compliant, be done with it.

Like Sound Choice, it isn't practical to go after individual home users. But where it differs is that Microsoft has a ton of money and a very good political action committee that can influence policy and make things happen.

Microsoft also has a scale that practically no one on the planet can match. Microsoft is still one of the most profitable tech companies there is because of that scale.

However, the entire software industry is slowly moving to the cloud which does create significant roadblocks for pirates. It moves them from being counterfeiters to having to have an actual account to use a product. Those accounts can of course be hijacked or stolen, but that moves into a different area of law from copyright and trademarking.

Hijacking an account or using a bogus credit card for access is a criminal activity.

-Chris

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-Chris