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Prince to sue YouTube, eBay over music use
09/13/2007 5:39 PM, Reuters
Mike Collett-White
U.S. pop star Prince plans to sue
YouTube and other major Web sites for unauthorized use of his
music in a bid to "reclaim his art on the Internet."
The man behind hit songs "Purple Rain," "1999" and "When
Doves Cry" said on Thursday 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.
Prince's latest initiative is likely to please record
industry executives and music retailers, who have not always
seen eye-to-eye with the 49-year-old.
He has referred to the record industry as "the speculation
business" and gave away copies of his new album "Planet Earth"
for free with a British Sunday newspaper.
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