Prince made a shocking move by suing his die hard fans. The "Purple Rain" singer has taken a $22
million legal action against 22 people who posted bootleg version of his live performances on Facebook
and blogs.Prince, notorious for being litigious, is asking each of the 22 fans a million each. The court
documents, which were filed earlier this month, said, "The defendants in this case engage in massive
infringement and bootlegging of Prince's material." One fan on a major Prince fan forum wrote, "Doing
things like this is making him lose more and more fans."
Prince Rogers Nelson, to give his full name, filed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement in the Northern
District of California on Monday. The legal documents listed only two fans by name and wrote others based
on the blogs such as PurpeHouse2 and PurpleKissTwo. Some of the blogs provided links to file-sharing
services in which his live performances could be downloaded for free.
"Prince has suffered and is continuing to suffer damages in an amount according to proof, but no less than
$1 million per Defendant," the suit adds.
"Defendants rely on either Google's Blogger platform or Facebook, or both, to accomplish their unlawful
activity," the Independent reports the court papers as saying.
"Rather than publishing lawful content to their blogs, they typically publish posts that list all the songs performed
at a certain Prince live show and then provide a link to a file-sharing service where unauthorized copies of the
performance can be downloaded," it adds.
Many fans complained that the action taken by Prince is unfair because the material has not been made available
commercially.
Source: AceShowbiz