UK police set up a “karaoke gang” of three elderly karaoke enthusiasts

The site of the “karaoke gangs” The

London police (a unit that deals with crimes in the field of intellectual property) announced the discovery of a “gang whose members are suspected of downloading and distributing tens of thousands of karaoke tracks to the Web.” It is also stated that the actions of the “gang” led to significant losses for owners of illegally distributed works. In fact, everything turned out to be somewhat different.

Firstly, the entire “gang” consists of three people who are 60, 53 and 50 years old. Secondly, a police press release said that “hundreds of albums were illegally uploaded to the Web by men, which resulted in thousands and thousands of music tracks getting into the Internet and financial losses for record companies.” This all sounds very significant, but in reality everything is again a bit wrong.

The fact is that the “gang” uploaded to the Internet only those works that were not available from any of the suppliers of karaoke tracks. And this means that the music companies did not lose anything, because there simply isn’t any files available for legal access, and people cannot pay for them.

The KaraokeRG website also says that the resource was not created for profit. All tracks are available for personal use only and are not intended for commercial use. In fact, the situation is not at all as grim as the police described it. "Gang" consists of three, in fact, pensioners who distribute karaoke backing tracks for enthusiasts of the same karaoke.

By the way, now the United States and the European Union are discussing the provisions of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership(TTIP). One of the points says that the violation of someone’s rights is not exclusively the activity of “pirates” with the aim of making a profit. Even non-profit projects whose authors do not request a license from copyright holders can have a negative impact on the latter.

Fortunately, this clause is unlikely to be included in the final version of the contract. So in Europe, the "karaoke gang" is unlikely to condemn. But in the USA, three karaoke enthusiasts are better off not flying.