Karaoke

[73mountroad 0]

http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html/emoticons/wallbash.gif Hi,

My name is Brian, can anyone advise me on wheather it is legal to backup your own karaoke discs to save them from damage and can they be used when you are doing a gigs. Is there a legal body which advises on this. Also I've also read it is illegal to copy your own discs onto your own hard drive as this is an infringement of the copywrite laws. If you have any info on this or similar situations which could arise I would be most grateful. I have heard the penalties for the above would result in the confiscation of all your equipment and large fines and even possible imprisonment. As I am just contemplating starting a mobile karaoke service I want to start doing it correctly.

thanks for any help.

[C.S 0]

Hi there and welcome to the forum,our karaoke expert(Paula) will be here soon,please be patient , i cant answer as i am outside of the UK and i am not a karaoke dj.While you are waiting have a quick gander at the rules.Have fun http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html/emoticons/042.gif

[ChrisPointon 0]

Common opinion, in the industry is that it's perfectly acceptable to "back up" original copies of any disc's bought and owned by yourself, provided that you don't lend / hire them out or fileshare them, and the copy and original are not being used at the same time.

 

This is only opinion rather than legal advice, but it seems that if you were discovered using copied discs and can prove that you own the original at the time, then I would doubt that any further legal action would be taken against you, by either the Trading Standards or FACT.

 

Neither does it say what form this Back Up has to take, in other words it could be a back up copy made on a disc, zip file, hard drive or smart media card.

 

I would suggest that you contact somebody in the legal profession before you act on any advice on legal matters given via DJU, to my knowledge non of us here are actually qualified in the legal profession.

 

Being found to be in prosession of copied discs or MP3 material is illegal, and yes you would run a great risk of losing your equipment in relation to this.

[CK`s 0]

We have had so many people tell us so many differnet things on this one, we play it safe, NO COPIES at all!

 

There was a radio programme I listened to a few weeks back and they said that technically you could be fined £10,00 for each track that you have copied, as it infringes the copyright, they did specify that they thought that djs would run into problems with it as they often backup, or use Laptops to run their discos, although the programme was more about copyright issues than mobile djs, they used us as an example.