Thursday, December 4, 2008

A note on professional posion pills

There is a karaoke DJ pair whose name I will not mention but they have been leaving posts on their competition...all negative at this point. which in the author's view is an attempt to improve their business by attempting to poison other people's reputation. While I am liberal on comments I do NOT approve comments from competition design to hurt other people's business nor will negative comments from karaoke DJs be taken seriously. (Obviously there is a conflict of interest). I have removed one such comment (and everyone can have a bad night) and will show another to illustrate the point:

-- comment begins --
For hosts, until legislation is finalized on the rights and wrongs of laptops, the "legal" way is to have original discs. Everything else is a grey area until a licensing mechanism is approved for copying discs (see both the Copyright Act and the Trademark Act).

Even the use of laptops is gray, although hosts believe that if they have all the music as originals on disc, it is ok to copy this on to a laptop and use it at shows. The Copyright legislation states a personalized copy can be made -- it disallows a copy for the purpose of business, e.g., hosts who get paid).

We have reached a time when technology is ahead of legislation, and the use of laptops and copied discs is not policed in Toronto because there is just too many of them; however, there have been occasions where police have visited the bar and the equipment has been taken away, and fines delivered to both the host and the bar.

Food for thought.

-- comment ends--

Now this person wants to hurt the business of CAVS and anyone using electronic media or at least scare them. (Basically anyone who has potentially a technical advantage over them) The professionals are well aware of what is needed to be compliant but more importantly, CDG are NOT the primary method of selling Karaoke media. The primary method is not MP3+G and you can buy professional karaoke licenses for those for the purposes of use in karaoke pubs which are more expensive than the standard price. So this comment is as technically out of date as they claim the laws are in relation to technology. Further more, CAVS encrypts all the files to prevent cloning. They've been operating in the USA for years and again, what is required is proof of licensing. Due to the MP3+G karaoke file formats, license is the key word. I must stress this comment is not a legal opinion, and these Karaoke DJs are NOT lawyers. Further more, most systems cannot ready CDG disks which makes MP3+G files not only more relevant but will soon be the ONLY method of obtaining karaoke files.

I've had people try to ask me to sabotage competition before based on interpretations on legality. So let me make this CLEAR: Anyone submitting legal information to me who is not a lawyer can have that comment removed. If they are Karaoke DJ's that also goes.