Prince Targets Fans for Copyright Violations
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.