Prince to sue Youtube and ebay over the use of his music

     Prince has announced that he plans to sue Youtube, ebay, and other major websites for allowing the unauthorized use of his music on their websites.  Prince has always kept a close watch over his own music and how it is distributed, so this comes as no surprise.  He made news a few years ago for butting heads with his record label over musical freedom issues and how he was a slave to the record label.   Always being an innovater when it comes to delivering his music on his terms - Prince was the first musician to come up with the concept of giving away a new cd with each ticket purchased to one of his concerts.  Official sales surged over 1 millions units as a direct result of giving away the cd at his concerts.  Shortly after, Billboard magazine changed their policy regarding the way cds would be ranked on their music charts - as a result, the Billboard charts now only include actual physical sales of cds and not cds that are given away.  Prince, who was an early innovater of delivering his music over the internet, now wants to regain control of his music and products on the internet. 

     I'm really curious to see how this plays out because this could be a landmark case.  If Prince should win, that would effectively give all of the other artists out there the green light to follow Prince's lead and sue the various websites.  With all the ad revenue generated by Youtube and some of these other major websites, this case could eventually have epic proportions that would fatally impact these websites.  I guess we'll have to wait and see how this plays out....

 Chuck M.

 Here are some key notes gathered from various sources including quotes from Prince: 

     Prince said that YouTube could not argue it had no control over which videos users posted on its site.

      "YouTube ... are clearly able (to) filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success," a statement released on his behalf said.

      YouTube responded by saying it was working with artists to help them manage their music on the site.

     "Most content owners understand that we respect copyrights, 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," said YouTube chief counsel Zahavah Levine.

     "We have great partnerships with major music labels all over the world that understand the benefit of using YouTube as another way to communicate with their fans."

     In addition to YouTube, Prince plans legal action against online auctioneer eBay and Pirate Bay, a site accused by Hollywood and the music industry as being a major source of music and film piracy.

     The legal action is the latest bid by the music industry to wrest back control over content in an age where file sharing, mobile phones and video sites make enforcing copyright increasingly difficult.

     But it is believed to be rare for an individual artist of Prince's stature to take on popular Web sites, while some up-and-coming performers actually encourage online file sharing to create a fan base and buzz around a record.

     "Prince strongly believes artists as the creators and owners of their music need to reclaim their art," the statement added.

     British company Web Sheriff has been hired to help coordinate the action.

     "In the last couple of weeks we have directly removed approximately 2,000 Prince videos from YouTube," said Web Sheriff managing director John Giacobbi.

     "The problem is that one can reduce it to zero and then the next day there will be 100 or 500 or whatever. This carries on ad nauseam at Prince's expense," he told Reuters.

      He said his company had also removed around 300 items from eBay, where whole lines of pirated goods trading on Prince's name had appeared, including clocks, socks, mugs and key rings.