I'm not going to dress this up all legalese like. Just straight talk.

We all know what piracy is. If you don't know, here's a quick way to tell if you are pirating. To sum it up, if you get any major manufacturers karaoke (Sound Choice, Stellar, Pocket Songs, Zoom, Sunfly, DKK, etc) without paying for it, you're pirating.

So if you fit the above description please stop doing what you're doing. Go out and purchase a collection of karaoke. You have many avenues to legally purchase karaoke now, including downloads from the UK based Manufacturers and a handful of American ones. If you're not going to change what you're doing, please stop using autOK. We never have, and never will authorize it's use in conjunction with stolen material. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE RUNNING A KJ SERVICE WITH AUTOK.

Why are we making this statement? Because you're making us look bad. Here we've been good to you, giving you a great product for nothing, and thanks to all the piracy Stellar and Sound Choice are on a witchhunt. Both companies are out to completely outlaw the practice of PC based karaoke.

Sure, making this statement is padding our own pockets since we do have the Online Karaoke feature that allows legal download and purchase of karaoke tracks, but that's the whole point. Don't we deserve a little somethin somethin for our efforts? Isn't that the way things should work? Not only is this making autOK look evil in the eyes of the karaoke manu's, but all computer based karaoke software makers.

Our liability over the situation is the same as any car maker, gun maker, etc. We're not responsible for the idiots of the world choose to do with our product.

With all that said, i'd like to introduce the 121 initiative.

Does that logo look kind of fascist? It's meant to be.

The 121 initiative is basically this.. You should be familiar with the 1:1 fair use rule.

1. You keep originals onsite at all times. You honestly have 50,000 songs and 6000 CDG's? Keep them in your trunk, nobody says you have to carry them in. Our reasoning for this is simple...

By having originals onsite, god forbid you're ever in an FBI anti-piracy raid you'll be able to prove there and then that you do indeed own the original songs and avoid a possible court summons. The police report that hits the districts attorneys desk will include "Suspect took me out to their car, and showed me a trunkload of original CD's that seemed to match the filesystem at the scene" No district attorney is going to go out of their way to prosecute you.

If they happen to take your gear, and originals you'll be setup to sue them for compensation from loss of work. (Can't work without your originals right?) You'll also be able to sue them for unlawful prosecution, and issuing a search warrant without proper evidence.

2. If you lose the original CDG, take it off your hard drive. Reciepts, CD jewel cases don't count. If you lost a receipt or a jewel case, you would still have the original CDG right? Remember, we're maintaining 1:1 here.

You might think "Oh well, it's OK to keep just 1." At what point will you draw the line? 1% of your missing collection? 10%? 60%? Don't kid yourself, keep your conciounce and your collection pure. Go out and purchase a new copy, the guys making the karaoke for us deserve it.

3. Don't Multirig. Multirigging is usually practiced by unscrupulous entertainment services that have a team of mobile KJ's for events. They purchase 1 copy of an original CDG, but send out 2 or more copies. 1:2 1:3 1:4 copy ratios are not 1:1

4. Don't allow home burned CDGs play at your shows. Don't make your show or venue a haven for home piracy. It's easier just to tell your customers "originals only from now on" than to make exceptions for one or two people. If you make 1 exception, you'll make 2, then someone else will complain "Well you let joebob use his homeburns." and you'll have a 3rd. Just eliminate it altogether.

5. Discipline, Discipline, Discipline. We know the temptation is hard to follow the above rules, but you must discipline yourself like martial artist. With discipline you will achieve focus. The more you practice the 121 philosophy, the better you will become at it.

These rules may be strict, but they eliminate any "Grey" area's that might exist. We have to be strict with ourselves. We have to run things above reproach. We dodged a bullet on the Stellar anti piracy statement (everybody but US was mentioned, maybe we should have hurt feelings?)

Finally, if you're a karaoke manufacturer or distributor that's happened to stumble on this please help support us if you support 121. If you sell karaoke, PLEASE let us be another arm in your distribution network, downloadable karaoke or disc based media. We'll share source code and time to try to get autOK working with your download site or web based store. We would like our users to be able to find as many avenues to legitimate karaoke purchase as possible.

Also if you're a Manufacturer or distributor that doesn't support 121, and doesn't support PC based karaoke we encourage you to take a closer look. You should come out for a visit to 7 Bamboo. This is our beta site not just for the software, but has been the beta site for the 121 initiative. We have a solution to the piracy problem, but it's much too hard to explain it here. You have to come see it for yourself, and decide once and for all if we really know what we're talking about, or if we're off our rockers. Our users and singers that support 121 say it's the solution, so maybe it's worth a look for you too.

The autOK team.