Prince lashes out at YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay
UPDATE: In an attempt to "reclaim the Internet," Prince is preparing to file lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay, for allegedly encouraging copyright violations, according to one of his representatives.
The rock star has hired Web Sheriff, a British-based company that specializes in hunting down pirated content on the Web, to launch a legal campaign against companies that wrongfully profit from the artist's work, according to John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff's president.
Prince plans to file suit in both the United States and the U.K., and has hired a top Swedish law firm to take action against The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracking site, Giacobbi said on Thursday. Prince has chosen a legal course because sites like YouTube and eBay have left him no other effective way to protect his copyright on their sites, according to Giacobbi.
Prince first hired Web Sheriff to patrol the Web for illegal uses of his material, and then to send "take-down notices" to sites when they found pirated material, Giacobbi said. But he added that sending written notices had little impact.
"In the past couple of weeks, we have removed about 2,000 infringing clips from YouTube," Giacobbi said. "We get them down and the next day, there are 100 or 200 more. Their business model is built on making money off other people's creative work."
Hani Durzy, a spokesman for eBay said the company has programs in place to help rights holders protect their property.
"The bottom line for us is that counterfeit or pirated goods are illegal and have no place on eBay," Durzy said. "We would be happy to work with Prince and his representatives to show them how they can work with us to make sure any infringing items come down."
Prince may be the first major artist to come out against Google, which acquired YouTube nearly a year ago. The move may prove a risky one for Prince. Many Internet users side with Google/YouTube on the issue of copyright. They think movie, TV and music executives are trying to put the squeeze on fans.
Prince could lose support from people who think his campaign is motivated by greed.
For Google, Prince is likely the best known artist to criticize the company for it's stand on copyright. Google and YouTube already face a $1 billion lawsuit filed earlier this year by media-conglomerate Viacom and a class-action suit filed by a group that includes several professional European sports leagues.
Google has always said that it obeys copyright laws. The company maintains that a safe harbor in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects service providers from any illegal acts committed by users. YouTube also removes copyright work once notified by an owner.
UPDATE
YouTube said that it works to protect copyright owners every day.
"Most content owners understand that we respect copyrights," said Zahavah Levine, YouTube's chief counsel in a e-mail. "We work every day to help them manage their content, and we are developing state-of-the-art tools to let them do that even better. We have great partnerships with major music labels all over world that understand the benefit of using YouTube as another way to communicate with their fans."
Peter Sunde, one of the cofounders of The Pirate Bay who goes by the online handle "brokep," said that he hasn't heard anything about Prince's lawsuit. He also said that The Pirate Bay likely receives take-down notices from Web Sheriffs but that the company's "spam filters take care" of them.
Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg.
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Bite the hand buddy, bite the hand.
He has lost his grip on reality and this stunt is yet another example of it.
it is.
him once. We got there at 8pm to get set up for a scheduled 9
o'clock shoot and he didn't show up till about 3am. His assistant
kept insisting that we not look him in the eyes and never speak to
him directly. That was the last time I ever worked with him.
Completely disrespectful and just plain weird.
Who could possibly use the Internet to search for any of the content that was released under his previous name?
This does, however, make for great publicity. I mean... if you don't have any talent and aren't putting out anything that anyone wants to listen to then the best way to get your name in the media is to either enter a limo without any underwear on or sue someone.
Good choice man! Good choice.
to "the artist formally known as Prince" because he got in a spat
with his record company? And now he's doing the same tactics as
the record companies!?!? For shame, for shame...
One side note, Prince: You don't own that content, the record
company does ;)
referred to music. When studios he worked with wouldn't look
towards the internet as a way to capitalize on the medium, he
had his own online store created. This was two years before
iTunes and the others so as to provide a means to give his fans
(and there are lots of us) an opportunity to cop a track that he
may have cut that weekend, without having to go through
Record Label red tape. I think he has a reason to be concerned if
people are making money off of him.
Also...
He's not some artist dying to get his stuff heard like some indy
artist. He has a catalogue spanning well over 25 years, over 100
Million albums sold and several hundred songs released. Not
talented? He started teaching _himself_ to play piano at 4 and
has mastered 22 Instruments in his lifetime. He also writes,
performs, produces and composes ALL of his own music as well
as for others. Tell me how many of the "talented" artists out
right now that can even come close. Anyone? Didn't think so.
a right to the income from their creative works. If nothing was done
to chase copyright breakers then where would we be? Already
smaller bands are being pushed off the edge of the income ladder
by everyone pirating their material, internet publicity doesn't
always work in their favour, and the 'prince'iple is the same
whether you are starting out or a huge star - unfettered copyright
theft is wrong. The fact that record companies overcharge all the
time and partly create the problem is a different matter.
right now that can even come close."
Well, there's Brittney...
Oh nevermind, I just found out she's the dancing face (read T&A) for a whole team of talented writers and musicians. Imagine my shock!
lol
copyright infringement then you have issues. Money hungry
thief. In the 80's people made tapes and distributed them - yet
nobody complained. If anything, music duplication was
encouraged to have people hear the music and buy it. I
download music from ThePirateBay, and if it blows then I won't
buy it and I delete it. However, if it is worth my cash then I
purchase it. I know most don't do such, but why limit those who
would rather try the product before a purchase? Ever heard of
trial-mode software? Why invest in a CD you CAN'T return?
OOhhh that's right, because they probably opened it and burned
it. Well then I think we're stuck with torrent sites.
actually, you don't have talent or art and the rubbish you make has no value to the world -- certainly it doesn't fulfil the constitutional standard of 'useful arts', as it is of no use. a commune where two work and twenty beg might indeed be unfair, but if that's the case then perhaps you ought to get a job and stop supporting yourself by suing information networks that allow people to enjoy their constitutional rights of self expression. you need to face it. people listened to you only because you had a monopoly on the record shops and radio stations. we have an alternative now, and that makes you a hasbeen. i saw an ad or something for your album 'freedom' once; well unfortunately for you, it's us who are now free. if you are so offended by a small fragment of your 'nonintellectual nonproperty' being caught in a homevideo of someone's baby dancing, then don't put it on the airwaves to invade our homes. better yet, do us a favour and stop recording period -- fade into oblivion where you belong.
Yeah they'll buy private planes for themselves, which will create a few jobs.
Oh, and 9/11 was an inside job.
Rosie O'Donnel proved it! That's the ticket.
There was a woman who recorded her baby dancing to one of the Superbowl halftime shows that Prince sang at. She posted the video on Youtube, but Prince sued Youtube and sued her to remove the video because it contained part of one of his songs.
Prince is a slimeball, he could have used that video to promote himself and his music, that even a baby can enjoy. It seems all Prince cares about is the money, not the fans. Say it isn't so Prince!
Anyone ever recall what happened to "Fair Use"? It seems to have died when Clinton and a Democratic majority of Congress passed that DMCA law that got rid of the "Fair Use" of copyrighted material and gave media companies the rights to install rootkits (like Sony does) on our computer systems to make sure we actually bought the songs we listen to on our system. We were betrayed, and lost our rights and freedoms in the process.
Are you ****ing kidding me?
You really think that Prince is simply protecting his rights by sueing a mother who wanted to show off her creative savvy? You really think that he wants to uphold intellectual property by visciously going after fans who want to use clips of songs for background music for homemade videos?
I say, again,...ARE YOU ****ING KIDDING ME???
All he's doing is simply pushing those people who appreciate his work enough to use in their own productions. It's not as if they're trying to parade his music around as their own. Prince is easily recognizable and someone who tried to misrepresent would be easily found out.
And the people who he claims to be going after. The illegal downloaders. They know what they're doing is illegal. One more time, THEY KNOW THAT IT'S ILLEGAL. If they knew that when they downloaded before, then they'll probably do it again. Besides, I've seen people who do this and they are WAY smarter than whoever Prince has hired to do this. Believe me, the people who've been downloading illegally will keep right on doing it.
Think about what's really going on here. The labels behind Prince and these other stars are scared because this is something that they have little to no control over. So they cry copyright infringement and hope that'll stop them. If these sites were distributing the content, then I'd understand. But all they're doing is displaying USER-CREATED content that happens to use reduced-quality clips. They aren't trying to take credit for others work-just displaying their budding artistic talents.
All this can be solved by a little something you've probably learned in high school: CITING SOURCES. If YouTube wanted to, it could probably make it so people had to include a credits page that cites where they got their music from. (which most people do anyway) This would solve a lot of problems.
From personal experience, I've heard something on YouTube that I thought was really good. I've gone on to iTunes and bought it from there. I do buy music and content legally-and so do most people.
All this will do is push away fans and make people dislike Prince and his music. Period.
Wow...
Seeing an classic artist on YouTube can only help to sell music...Music that otherwise would be forgotten...or worse yet...never known at all.
... So you're saying they are like record companies?
But record companies are suing for this stuff too.... so if you are a record company and you make money off this you are good, but if you're a technology company any you make money off this you're bad??!! Ok, so someone's going to argue "but record companies pay the artists" but that's BS because:
1- the record companies pay the artist pennies for every dollar they make.
2- the record companies are making money DIRECTLY from the SALE of music licensing whereas these companies are making money from advertising no matter what the content is.
3- these companies don't post the content themselves and they are only open forums, you might as well sue your local church if someone in your congregation copies a CD and gives it you you while walking into church on Sunday. What's next, is the phone company liable if someone else threatens you over their telephone lines? (if so, give me the record company's phone number :-).
4- the content on youtube is free so there is no profit from an artists work - unless you count the graphic artists who are working for these companies but they get paid for making the advertisements.
I think its time to sue prince as an english speaking person because he illegally stole my langague, pieced it together into his songs and is proffiting off my langague.... it makes about as much sence.
time for performers to be performers, be paid to perform, not for selling CD's... that's where the money is anyway and that's the only place you can protect your profit. since when does a performer get paid for selling 1's and 0's arrainged in a certain way on a CD / MP3, as a network engineer i think the money for a song should go to whoever wrote the codec that encodes to CD / MP3 because their creativity made the whole thing possible in the first place.... but they don't get paid after they've written the codec for GPU, why should a performer be paid after he's performed????!!!!
enough of this copyrighting a sine wave crap - if you're a performer, perform... i'll pay 50.00 a ticket to see you if your good... if you only good enough to be background music that i'm going to listen to 3 times a year, sorry but your music will be copied. if you make something good (which most crap put up by record companies using illegal tactics like paying playola to turn into a "hit" is NOT) then i'll pay for the experience of seeing it live - your free downloaded/stolen song is your advertisement for your performances and i'm not paying for others to advertise to me.
- Prince who?
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by 420trvlr
September 14, 2007 8:46 AM PDT
- He must be going broke to be so worried about loosing any money. You can't be a total freak forever.
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See all 40 Comments >>I have nearly 1000 cd's all of which I have ripped onto my hard drive. And I don't care what any of them think. **** me off and I won't buy their albums.