Prince takes YouTube to court for Copyright Infringement

Prince, an influential star of the 1980s and known for being highly protective of his copyright, is planning to drag YouTube, eBay, and The Pirate Bay to the court for copyright infringement, claiming the Internet sites are allegedly encouraging users to post unauthorized content and violate copyright laws.

The Web-savvy artist has announced he is launching a legal action against internet sites to protect copyright "not just for himself, but for all artists in the digital age". The campaign is an effort to “reclaim his art on the Internet,” Prince explained.

The U.S. recording artist Prince has spent the summer playing 21 gigs at The O2 arena in London. Although fans were banned from clicking photographs or taking video footage on their mobile phones, many have still posted clips on commercial and pirate internet sites including YouTube. The London concert series is due to end next week.

Prince is gearing up to file suit in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and for the purpose he has hired Web Sheriff, a company which specializes in tackling internet piracy and copyright infringement. The firm regulates the Internet for pirated content and sends "take down notices” to offenders.

Prince said he has hired the British-based company to ensure unauthorized clips from his recent London concerts are removed from the Internet, and send sites “take-down” notices when any unlawful clips are detected.

According to John Giacobbi, managing director of Web Sheriff, "Prince feels very strongly about how his art is perceived and he doesn't want it remembered as grainy mobile phone footage from the back of the stadium. Prince's actions are a brave and pioneering step to challenge the status quo and hand control over internet rights back to the artists."

Although the firm has succeeded in removing more than 2,000 Prince’s unauthorized clips from YouTube, but Giacobbi said, "As soon as they are taken down, more spring up the next day. The onus is on the artists as opposed to YouTube itself."

YouTube, founded in February 2005 is a popular free video sharing website which lets users upload, view, and share video clips. Since early 2007 is has regularly received over 8 million hits a day.

YouTube utilizes Adobe Flash technology to display video clippings. Such is the popularity of this service that the company was named Time magazine's "Invention of the Year" for 2006.

Google bought San Bruno-based YouTube for $1.65 billion in October. This prompted the site's co-founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, to post a video that proclaimed "the king of video and the king of search" had gotten together.

The hugely popular video-sharing portal is facing several lawsuits that allege the site is engaged in massive copyright infringement to build traffic to the site.

In March, the New York-based entertainment giant Viacom Media filed a suit with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging Google's San Bruno-based video-sharing site YouTube knowingly infringed Viacom copyrights "on a huge scale."

In May, the Football Association Premier League Ltd. better known as the English Premier League, and music publisher Bourne Co. had launched lawsuit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, accusing the video-sharing website of "knowingly” misappropriating its intellectual property by encouraging footage to be viewed on its site.

Born on June 7, 1958 as Prince Rogers Nelson to John L. Nelson (pianist and songwriter) and Mattie Shaw (a singer) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Prince was called Skipper as a boy. During the '80s, he emerged as one of the most singular talents of the rock & roll era, capable of seamlessly tying together pop, funk, folk, and rock.

Prince wrote and produced funky pop songs that had cross-genre appeal, including the top-sellers 1999, “When Doves Cry and Kiss”. He also starred in the 1984 feature film “Purple Rain”. Prince was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. He was first married to dancer Mayte Garcia from 1996 to 99. Later, he married Manuela Testolini in 2001, who filed for divorce in 2006.