What Is Piracy?

The KIAA definition of piracy is the unauthorized and intentional act of copying, selling, distributing, acquiring or the transferring by any method, means or manner, sound recordings that are not in the public domain or subject to “fair use”, regardless as to whether the rights holder(s) in the underlying work (musical composition) is the same as the rights holder(s) in the sound recording.

Prior to the digital information age, when thinking of piracy one would immediately conjure up images of pirate ships with Blackbeard at the helm commanding his band of rogue swashbucklers as they pillaged and plundered the merchant ships travelling the shipping lanes of the high seas.

Fast forward about 350 years and piracy has taken on a whole new meaning.  Today when we think of piracy, what now comes to mind is a far less violent, but yet significantly more devastating criminal act commonly referred to as media piracy or what can probably better be described as the stealing of intellectual property.

Unlike the pirates of the mid to late 1600’s, modern day pirates don’t fly the Jolly Roger, nor are they easily identifiable by their attire or any other means by which one could easily identify these criminals.  On the music side of things, these pirates often appear to be legitimate businesses, but commit their acts of piracy by offering to both unwitting and well-informed consumers, thousands of songs for prices that are far below fair market value.

There is another category of piracy that may be even more common than of that mentioned above.  Acts of piracy in this category are committed by those who illegally download, copy or share music for use in a professional karaoke system (often referred to as a “karaoke rig”).  These systems or “rigs” are typically used in karaoke shows and other commercial venues. These illegal operators/KJ’s are analogous to the buccaneers of old, and can be found in nearly every community where karaoke shows are featured.  They earn their profits at the expense of not only those in the supply chain, but also to competing karaoke hosts or KJ’s as well.

Then there is the category of non-commercial pirates that ranges anywhere from the casual occasional user, up to the serious karaoke hobbyist with huge libraries containing thousands of karaoke songs.  Often times these casual user/hobbyists will appear at a karaoke show with an illegally burned copy of the songs they want to perform.

Through the course of defining piracy, we would be remiss if we didn’t make mention of at least one scenario which is not considered piracy, and that is when a consumer unknowingly purchases pirated karaoke music from an unscrupulous dealer, or from some other source.  These consumers are just as much of a victim as anyone as they have been sold illegal products that they must either destroy or repurchase legally.  It is probably unlikely that any of these unscrupulous dealers will refund these unsuspecting customer their money.

Regardless as to how one chooses to categorize these illegal activities, the end result is the same.  It still has a negative impact on the karaoke industry (and the entire music industry for that matter), not only for the economic hardships it imposes on karaoke labels and producers who are unable to fairly compete with these rogue labels, but also in terms of the negative image it portrays to the rest of the music industry and with music publishers in particular.

There are probably other forms of piracy as well, but at the present time the main forms of piracy mentioned above are fairly representative and conclusive of the forms of piracy that fall within the scope and initial interest of the KIAA.  These forms of piracy are what the KIAA endeavours to address and combat as part of its agenda in the upcoming months.