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Prince: Take down Get Up
Prince is spending large sums of cash ensuring that unauthorised Prince stuff on the web is moved about a bit, to different servers, or taken down for a while and then put up in a different format:
More than 1,000 unauthorised clips have been taken down in the last few days, according to Web Sheriff, the UK firm he has hired to enforce the ban.
That only leaves about 2,700 odd returns on GoogleVideo search if you look for "Prince Live", then.
Prince's people insist it's not about a rich man trying to hold on to every penny:
John Giacobbi, managing director of Web Sheriff, said: "Some artists are very relaxed about the use of their image and music on the internet, some less so.
"Prince feels very strongly that people should remember his concerts as they were, not as some grainy mobile phone footage."
"Prince feels very strongly that people should remember his concerts as they were, not as some grainy mobile phone footage."
Of course, you could ensure that by allowing people to bring HD video cameras with them, then. No? Oh.
The artist has also instructed Web Sheriff to police unauthorised distribution of his music on file-sharing websites such as Pirate Bay, and is seeking to stop auction sites like eBay from selling unauthorised merchandise.
Mr Giacobbi said: "We are not targeting fans who might want to sell their copy of Purple Rain, we are targeting companies in China manufacturing Prince handbags and selling them in their thousands.
"Prince's actions are a brave and pioneering step to challenge the status quo and hand control over internet rights back to the artists."
Mr Giacobbi said: "We are not targeting fans who might want to sell their copy of Purple Rain, we are targeting companies in China manufacturing Prince handbags and selling them in their thousands.
"Prince's actions are a brave and pioneering step to challenge the status quo and hand control over internet rights back to the artists."
How reassuring that Prince isn't "targeting fans" who are selling second-hand records - what with that being perfectly legal and their right. Why not pat yourself on your little purple back for not suing people for humming the chorus from 1999 while you're at it?
As for 'unofficial' merchandise, what actually gives Prince the right to try and stop this? If what you sell isn't being passed off as somehow official, and uses images that are public domain or otherwise not subject to license fees, and assuming Prince hasn't trademarked his name for Chinese handbags, then on what grounds is he stopping their sale? There is an enormous difference between "unauthorised" and "illegal", however galling it might be for the artist; we should perhaps challenge any attempt to try and suggest that a secondary market for this sort of thing is, by its existence, wrong.
7 comments:
As much as I hate to agree with someone seeking to put the genie back in the YouTube bottle, most of that live footage found on 'Tube is terrible quality.
Yea, not targeting fans? Obviously you have never been to the quake....which. btw..is a NON-profit site that is not selling anything prince related.
anything to get press, loser!!!! we should take all his crap off the internet and let him shove it!!! who cares u hasbeen.
he is so full of himself!!!! you are so over with. we could care less, thanks to utube we didn't pay for the lousy old down by the river lounge lizard act. thats what hes really mad about. utube showed us he's not worth the money. get it???? i think his fans should get alife, he made sure they got the worst seats in the house intentionally!!! because he knew they would pay anyway!!! how low can he go from there???? close down your sites people and worship something else that just doesnt suck your life out like this over the hill egotistical vampire. hes the thief that stole his hits from someone else!!!! did he pay them???? n o he didn't. he pretended not to know them, after he used their work. so thief is relative to truth???
SHOVE YOUR CLIPS LOSER!!!!!! YOUR MUSIC SUCKS FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS!!!!! ENOUGH OF YOUR EGO!!!!
CLOSE ALL PRINCE SITES NOW!!!!! MAKE A POINT TO CLOSE HIS CRAP OFF THE INTERNET. WE ARE USED UP. PAY FOR REAL MUSIC NOT HYPE. EVERYTHING HE DOES IS JUST FOR PRESS BECAUSE THE MEDIA COULD CARE LESS, AND NOW HIS FANS ARE GONE. HES A LEGEND IN HIS OWN RETARDED MIND.
this isnt really just any other long-running bullshit major label artist; prince has a long, detailed and complicated history with bootleggers, who knows his stuff, and is a very complicated person by all accounts.
one point that should definitely be made here is that that he plain does not want any of his previous pre-Jehovah's Witness material released, legal or illegal, because in his opinion the profanity and explicit sexual content is against his current Jehovah's Witnesses-subscribed beliefs (he's taken all his pre-JW post-Warner records i.e. Gold Experience, Emancipation - that he has complete control over the masters for - out of print for this reason).
Random:
That's a good point - certainly, his view of quality/content has been important to him, although I suspect there's very little "mobile phone footage" that exists of those days... and it doesn't explain the war on handbags.
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