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Prince launches $22 million lawsuit against bootleg sharers
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 28 January 2014
Prince has been looking like a pretty chilled out guy of late. He’s emerged as a Twitter comedian, appeared in a TV sitcom, and decided to give out all the details about his new band 3rdeyegirl’s upcoming UK tour in Lianne La Havas’s living room. But if you thought the burning rage that bubbles inside him whenever he sees his music shared online had died down, you would be wrong. Even though most people ceased to use the internet three and a half years ago.
The latest in a long line of lawsuits brought against internet users by Prince was filed earlier this week, addressing one of his particular bugbears – the sharing of bootlegged live recordings. Having forced offline a whole load of six second clips of his SXSW performance from Vine last year, he has now filed legal papers demanding a total of $22 million in damages from 22 people who have shared full live recordings of his music on the net.
The lawsuit notes that the evil file-sharers in question have all used Google’s Blogger platform and/or Facebook to share bootlegs of his performances, one in particular providing links to 393 recordings on various different file-sharing services. It also notes that Prince has not been able to identify the real names of any of the file-sharers, hence they are being sued under their online usernames.
The defendants, it’s also noted, often speak to each other to exchange bootlegs directly. Like, say, fans of an artist might do. However, according to the claim, the sharing of these recordings has “caused and will continue to cause substantial, immediate and irreparable injury to Prince for which there is no adequate remedy at law”.
As such, he is seeking at least $1 million in damages per defendant, as well as costs, legal fees and any profits (and interest on those profits) the defendants may have made from his recordings. He also wants the music impounded and returned to him. Though if he wanted it that badly, surely he could just download it himself.
The lawsuit demands that the 22 defendants are tried by jury. It remains to be seen how far this case gets.
