Do not mess with Prince and his music (read: copyrights). The renowned musician is suing 22 bloggers and Facebook users a cool $22M for bootlegging his live concerts.
Reports Spin:
Prince is hitting the road, but maybe think twice before recording any of the shows and posting tracks online. His Purpleness has filed a copyright lawsuit against 22 different users of Facebook and Google’s Blogger platform. And although he doesn’t know the identity of all the defendants, he’s demanding each pay $1 million in damages. That could’ve bought a lot of Paisley Park pajama-party tickets.
According to the 21-page complaint filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco (via Antiquiet), the defendants “engage in massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince’s material.” The lawsuit targets Dan Chodera, Karina Jindrova, and 20 anonymous defendants. Chodera and Jindrova allegedly operated a no-longer-online Facebook account that posted a bunch of bootleg Prince videos. The other defendants — “Does” 1 through 20 — are accused of similar infractions, such as pointing to a 1983 Chicago set from WorldofBootleg.blogspot.com. Hey, we’d like to hear that one.
So yeah, you may want to chill on hosting any Prince music online without proper permission.
If not, as is the case her, Prince will reportedly demand that you pay his lawyer fees, be taken to jury trial, get you permanently blocked from ever sharing his music, give back any money they made from the videos on top of the million dollars in damages.
Prince Rogers Nelson doesn’t play.
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