Internet radio sites aren’t the only ones facing recording industry woes. Even Karaoke performances are coming under fire. Users of “The Sims On Stage” (a site owned by Electronic Arts) were recently greeted with the following message:
Due to a recent development with our song licenses on The Sims On Stage, some of your webcam Karaoke performances will no longer be available after Wednesday, August 20th.
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira at The Industry Standard reports that users of the site were emailed the message, which also said that other songs would no longer have video recording options.
On the surface, this would seem like a “who cares” situation, but it brings up a question of where the music industry authorities are drawing the line.
“If they are after a section of EA as small as The Sims On Stage, I have to wonder what else they are looking at,” says Aleo-Carreira.
Mike Masnick at TechDirt says, “You get the feeling that the recording industry would go after people singing in the shower if they could.”
By the sounds of it, they could do just that if a video of that shower were posted online. If I were you, I’d steer clear of posting videos of yourself singing a drunken Karaoke rendition of Dream Warriors at last year’s Christmas party on YouTube. Of course, it will probably be your co-workers that you get you on that one.
