Raleigh, N.C. ? Copyright violations could kill karaoke at Cody’s.

On Monday, three music publishers filed a federal lawsuit against Cody’s Chinese Bistro for three unlicensed performances at the Raleigh night spot.

Bar owner Cody Tseng is flabbergasted about why his karaoke machine is under fire.

“I already paid for it, how come I have to pay for it again?” Tseng said when he learned of the suit. Tseng had no immediate plans to silence the tunes.

Cody’s was one of 26 bars, restaurants and juke joints nationwide that were served with suits last week from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a group that manages the copyright use of more than 8.5 million songs.

The suit said songs by Richard Marx, Melissa Etheridge and Kevin Cronin were sung at Cody’s in March, sans royalties.

The fact that the performances were karaoke doesn’t matter, said Vincent Candilora, ASCAP senior vice president of licensing.

“It really doesn’t matter how the songs are performed,” Candilora said. “Copyright infringement is copyright infringement.”

Local bar and restaurant owners and managers, as well as legal experts, say Tseng has to pay under a decades-old practice for commercial restaurants and business to pay licensing fees to associations representing musicians.

“The law is about performance rights for the creators,” said Paul Jones, a professor in copyright law at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.