Pulling the Plug on Local Karaoke Nights

Bull & Bear, a local pub in Syracuse, NY, has been slapped with a lawsuit because of its karaoke nights.  The lawsuit doesn’t allege noise complaints or grossly off-key renditions of Friends in Low Places.  Rather, ASCAP lawyers sued the local pub in federal court for using unlicensed songs:

ASCAP lawyers filed the lawsuitafter a private investigator hired by the organization attended akaraoke night at the bar and wrote down the names of songs the singerswere performing. Any public performance of copyrighted songs requiresthe venue to have a license to use the tunes, the lawsuit said.

The licensing fees would have cost the pub about $3500 for the past five years.  The lawsuit requests that the pub stop hosting karaoke nights and pay between $750 and $30,000 for each violation.

[Meredith R. Miller]