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Why is it that the musical geniuses are always the craziest? It’s not just that they have a lot more media coverage, there must be something specific that happens to your neural connections when you attain a certain level of musical creativity: Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Brian Wilson, Phil Spector, Syd Barrett, Witney Houston, ODB, Iggy Pop… the list goes on.

So Prince though, in a move that is about as desperate, stupid and publically damaging as Lars Ulrich (Metallica) v. Napster has decided to sue 22 individuals – owners of websites and Facebook pages – for the princely sum of US$1 million each because he claims that they these websites constitute an interconnected network of bootleg distribution which is able to broadly disseminate unauthorised copies of Prince’s musical compositions and live performances”.

The 21-page lawsuit was filed in San Francisco and claims that a “massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince’s material” was perpetrated, with each web page committing “up to thousands of separate acts of infringement and bootlegging”. By my count, a thousand bootlegs couldn’t possibly be worth more than a few thousand dollars worth of lost CD sales, and even more amusingly, the shared bootlegs are from unreleased concerts.

Furthermore, websites such as Purple House, Purple Kiss and Funky Experience Four are clearly for (and by) Prince’s most hardcore fans who surely own the majority of his studio releases anyway.

A moderator on the Prince fan forum prince.org, Nursev captured it best:
“Prince will be remembered for making some of the most beautiful music ever created and for hating his fans.”

[Via]

Matt Derody

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