Sep 14, 2007 05:12 PM
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Tue Feb 9
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Purple Rain vs. Chocolate Rain: Prince is suing YouTube for not actively removing illegal copies of his work. His argument is simple and solid: "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." YouTube responded with the usual lines.
The company's top lawyer said, "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." This bullshit started to smell months ago, and Prince has long been a caller-out of bull. (Remember that the "my name is now a symbol" stunt was his way of avoiding an unfair label contract.) On the other hand, YouTube knows that it's easier for most labels and artists to give in and take a cut of ad revenue from these illegal clips, than to constantly delete the clips that users will submit over and over like the Persian horde.
Prince is also suing eBay for allowing the sale of knockoff merch, and file-sharing site Pirate Bay for helping users find illegal copies of his music. There goes the support he earned from free-the-music wonks this summer when he gave his latest album away in newspapers.
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