The Surest Way To Be Compliant

Compliant operation starts by acquiring an original Compact Disc plus Graphics, MP3G format on CD, SD card or other original manufacturer supplied media  for every track you have loaded on your hard drive. You can buy legal products from the producer’s online store or from the many authorized retailers. You can also find some original CD+Gs for sale in the secondary market, such as through Craigslist and eBay. When buying CD+Gs in the secondary market, beware: there are many unscrupulous sellers in the marketplace. Be sure that you are getting original producer’s products. If your karaoke product is not original, it is not legal.

Running Karaoke on Computer, CAVS, or Other Hard Drive Systems

If you don’t want to play from CDs, we understand. A large collection of CDs takes up a lot of space. Bringing your CDs to a venue exposes them to theft and loss. CDs can get scratched from too much handling. If you choose the convenience of a hard drive system, we understand the technical reasons for doing so. But, let’s be clear: For legal reasons, the producers do not authorize the use of hard drive systems to play our karaoke music commercially. But we will agree not to sue you for “media-shifting” the contents of our Compact Disc plus Graphics, MP3G format on CD, SD cards or other original manufacturer supplied media if you follow our media-shifting policy.

KIAA Member Producer’s Media Shifting Policy

The complete format/media shift policy of the producer members of the KIAA is that in the absence of written permission to perform a media/format shift from CDG or any producer’s other original media to a hard drive based system, you are subject to investigation and notification of infringement (whether by letter of intent to sue or by a notice of a suit being filed or by being served in a lawsuit). However, IF you can prove that you have all the original legal discs or other producer’s original media in your possession prior to AND at the time of the investigation and continuing through the audit, then you will be dropped from whatever legal action is being contemplated or taken.

If you intend to format or media shift the song tracks from a CDG or other producer’s original media to a hard drive system (a lap top computer, for example), we will issue you a “Covenant Not to Sue” document for making the shift (and creating a new copy), which requires that you do not use the discs, but keep them in your possession and that you have a 1:1 relationship between the songs files on your computer and the songs on the original discs. (In other words, you can’t create a new copy and then sell the original discs and you can’t have any music on your computer for which you did not buy and still own an original disc). We also will try to arrange audits IN ADVANCE of any actions by the producer members of the KIAA for those that want to prove compliance and legitimacy without having to be prompted or investigated as the motivation.

If you have any track on your hard drive for which you do not own a Compact Disc plus Graphics, MP3G format on CD, SD cards or other original manufacturer supplied media, that track must be deleted from your hard drive. It does not matter if you once owned the producer’s product, but subsequently lost it, sold it or had it stolen. The track must be deleted.

Examples of One-To-One

Let’s say you have two hard drive systems, each with the same content. In that case, for each track you have, you need two original producer’s tracks, one for each hard drive. That means you need to own two original copies of the Compact Disc plus Graphics, MP3G format on CD, SD cards or other original manufacturer supplied media.

If you have one hard drive system and one CD-only system, the same rules apply. If you put the contents of your discs or other producer’s original media onto the hard drive system, you have to put your producer’s product “on the shelf.” You cannot use those discs to also play a show using your producer’s original product in another show.

If you have even one track on a hard drive that does not meet this policy, all of your media-shifting activities are unauthorized, and you could be sued.

After looking at this policy, if you think you’re not compliant, please contact us to discuss special programs we have in place to help karaoke hosts become compliant. And it’s better for you to contact us first, because we have investigators visiting karaoke shows virtually every night of the year in an ever expanding number of cities. If we contact you first, it will be more expensive to resolve this problem.

We have discounts available on large quantities of producer’s products.  Unfortunately, if you acquired an illegal hard drive, many of the songs are no longer available since the original songs are out-of-print and you will have to delete them from your system.