Customs on Friday said they arrested 18 people this month on suspicion of allowing party room and restaurant customers to stream karaoke songs in breach of copyright laws.

Officers said they raided 31 party rooms and one restaurant between July 2 and 25, seizing karaoke song players and four gaming devices.

Divisional commander for intellectual property technology crime investigation, Shek Ka-yin, said it is the first time customs has cracked down on people allegedly offering karaoke songs via online streaming platforms.

"For traditional cases, party rooms or restaurants are installed with karaoke players preloaded with infringing karaoke songs," he explained.

"For this case, instead, infringing karaoke songs which were preloaded in the karaoke devices were put in a data centre, which used the streaming technology to transfer the infringing karaoke songs to the subject party rooms for use by the customers," Shek alleged.

Customs said two people were charged with infringing copyright and violation of the Trade Descriptions Ordinance, while the remaining 16 were released on bail.