Owners of establishments can be held liable for Karaoke companies copyright infringement.

Can I be sued?

Karaoke hosts that use pirated material are committing infringement of the producer’s intellectual property rights. The producers have spent millions of dollars creating the accompaniment tracks that karaoke operators use. When a host uses material without paying for it, that host may be violating the law. If you own or run a venue and you hire a host who infringes their rights, you may also be held liable for the host’s activities. It’s called “vicarious liability,” and it applies if you had the right to control the activity (such as by allowing or refusing the host access to your venue), and you benefited from it regardless of whether you knew about the infringement since knowledge is not a requirement for vicarious liability.

What are the penalties?

For copyright infringement, a court can impose damages of not less than $750 per infringing song, and if the person was aware they were infringing it becomes “willful” and the penalty can be increased up to $150,000 per infringing song. For more details, see Title 17, United States Code, Sections 502-506. For trademark infringement, the court can impose damages of up to $200,000 per federally registered trademark. If the defendant did know that they were infringing, then the infringement becomes “willful” and the damages can be awarded up to $2 million per mark. See Title 15 USC, Section 1117. There are no set damages for unfair competition – the court will decide how much damage the producers have suffered and make an appropriate award. Of course, the actual awards depend on a number of factors.

The Karaoke host says they are legal. What are some clues they are not being honest?

For a Karaoke Host to have legally acquired Karaoke songs, they would have had to purchase a Compact Disc plus Graphics, MP3G format on CD, SD card or other original manufacturer supplied media for each and every song on each and every system they might have in operation. Even legal download sites selling karaoke video files (there are many illegal ones as you might imagine) are for home consumer use only as stated in the site’s Terms and Conditions or End User License Agreements. The average price per song on a legally manufactured disc is about $1.00, so if a host claims that they have over 20,000 or 30,000 songs they would have had to invest that much money in their music libraries. Some hosts who have been in business a long time might have made such an investment, but the majority of karaoke hosts in business less than a few years have possibly acquired their libraries illegally.

Another clue is the price that they are charging. Any host who has made an investment of tens of thousands of dollars simply cannot afford to work for less than about $150 a night. Illegal hosts often work for $75 a night (or less!) and/or beer and tip money.

For a completely legal Karaoke show the only thing you need to know is Spudlite Karaoke

Call today (616)706-6235