UK Police Busts Karaoke 'Gang' For Sharing Songs You Can't Buy (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The London Police have an Intellectual Property Crime Unit. They just issued a press release bragging about "dismantling" a "gang" running "commercial-scale copyright infringement." But if you look into the case, it turns out to just be three old guys who stream karaoke tracks that mostly aren't available from karaoke manufacturers. "This means that far from losing 'a significant amount of money,' music companies were actually deprived of little or nothing, since there were no legal copies that people could pay for." This "gang" didn't even sell any of the tracks they streamed — it seems to just be a hobby for some karaoke enthusiasts. "So why is Hodge calling what seems to be an extremely low-level operation 'commercial-scale?' It's probably because 'commercial scale' is a key legal concept that the recording industry has been trying to redefine to include activities that don't involve financial gain."

Comments

Worse than pirates!

[Anonymous Coward]

music companies were actually deprived of little or nothing, since there were no legal copies that people could pay for.

Uh, WHAT? Those are the worst. Proper "pirates" at least have the decency to side advertise commercially available materials. But those guys hooked people on materials not for sale. They deprived music companies of people listening to commercially available tracks. The time those people were listening to these karaoke tracks could have been spent listening to commercially avaliable trash. And all the time the listeners try finding and acquiring copies of music no longer available could have been spent buying commercially available stuff.

They are filthy parasites on the total music mindshare, almost as bad as buskers playing their own compositions. Record companies invest billions of dollars in order to kill the interest in old artists and get people to buy new recordings to keep the dime rolling. Preserving interest in old recordings is like digging up the bones of one's parents and making love to them instead of the person herself.

I feel much safer

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I know I feel much safer with these dangerous criminals off the streets. Whew, now I can sleep at night without fear of, uh, ummm, something.

Thank you, Intellectual Property Crime Unit of London, for fighting the Good Fight and keeping karaoke-related crimes from spiraling out of control and destroying our youth and the very fabric of society!

(And, of course, as if singing karaoke wasn't a crime in and of itself.)

Re:illegal nazi cows use hosts

[davester666]

I don't think it makes a difference. Generally, most people singing any karaoke songs, properly licensed or not, violates basic decency.