RSSPrince Targets Fans for Copyright Violations
By Tim Conneally | Published November 7, 2007, 2:58 PM
Pop musician Prince continued his online content bulldozing with a series of legal notices sent to sites devoted to the artist, demanding that all images of, lyrics by, and "anything linked to the likeness of " the artist be removed.
Fan sites housequake.com, prince.org, and princefams.com have joined together to form Prince Fans United, stating that the actions amount to censorship and violate free speech laws.
This seems to be a repeat of what took place two months ago, when Prince's lawyers were in the process of removing all content from YouTube that contained the artist's music. One of the videos that was removed, a 29 second clip of a baby dancing to Prince's 1984 hit "Let's Go Crazy," was met with a lawsuit by the mother and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The group claimed the removal infringed upon her fair use and free speech rights.
To quote the aforementioned song: "In this life, you're on your own."
This lyric reflects the 49 year-old pop star's attitude toward his music. Since the late 70's, he has composed, arranged, produced, and performed nearly all the instrumental tracks for every one of his songs. It only logically follows that he should want to maintain control all the way to the consumers' ears.
Despite how silly 80's rock stars look when they cannot evolve, Prince will likely not lose fans over his behavior. He may not be adapting well to music's digital marketplace, but with a repertoire of several hundred songs, anyone who claims to be a Prince fan would not deny his contribution to music.
What a sad little man!
This looks more like a ineffectual grope for some free publicity, even if it is bad, than any real effort to contain the rampant copyright violations of prince's work/image.
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|Good for him ... I hope he succeeds in removing all his work from the Internet.
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|LOL
Good one. :)
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|It's his stuff, let him do what he wants.
Like he cares about the little ones whoever writes anything bad about him. LOL
Boycott his stuff, that's all.
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|well if he does find and sue his one fan will the nickel be enough???????????? what a public nuisance.
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|I wonder if Betanews will get one of those legal notices for writing this story...
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|Where is Elton John I would think he would join this move..
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|I heard he's changed his name to a symbol again.
It's supposed to be an fist with an upstretched middle finger, aimed directly at his fans.
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|LoL.
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|I guess being a Prince Fan wasn't hard enough already.
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|So I take it he, along with the *IAA, hasn't learned the lesson about how suing one's own fans does not make one's own music sales increase?
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|Pretentious self-absorbed has-been.
Is is possible for a guy to be a diva?
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|I think they're called divos.
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|It's not too late...to rip it?
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|He-vas?
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|Rip it good!
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|Boo freakin' Hoo.
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|Prince? That guy is still around? I thought he died of AIDS years ago. Go figure.
At any rate, I wouldn't his music if *he* paid me to listen to it. Never mind actually buying it.
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|How sad...
It's like that guy who tells the joke and thinks it's still funny. Prince still actually thinks he's relevant.
Poor little guy... Makes you just wanna scoop him up and give him cookies, doesn't it?
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|I think that this is one of those rare times when I could not have said it any better myself.
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|what a limp-d***ed asswipe. The truth is he hasn't produced a quality piece of music since purple rain.
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|Soon he will ask everyone has to remove their posters from the bedroom also .. Super great PR move..
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|Wow, he's gone insane.
Maybe he should team up with Disney and Microsoft on this though, as I'm sure they could give him some pointers on alienating your customer base.
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|It is kinda [read: really] sad when a washed-up former artist thinks he can sue his former fans for doing something that is virtually natural to them on the internet.
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|prince? when ur career had been dead for over 15 years the best move is to "target ur fans" or whats left of them??
I dont think so buddy.. well maybe ur trying to digg urself further from acceptance? then ur on point!
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|...maybe ur trying to digg urself...
You need to spend some time away from the Internet =p
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|What a dipsh!t!
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|Prince is a little f**got.
And he doesn't like it when you call him that.
Little.
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|"And he doesn't like it when you call him that."
Would you?
Twat.
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|That crusty old fart isn't dead yet?
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|He's the same age as Michael Jackson, and neither is he (who I figured would've at least fallen apart by now).
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|Prince who??
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|The Dude Formerly Known As Rogers Nelson Should Get A Life.
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