I've heard of it, but I've never heard the stories. Except for that baby incident.

i got a cease and desist when i put Dance 4 Me on my blog :/

not good.

Not yet!

prince has never sued anyone, but i've been involved with a few things that had cease and decist orders. once i took a phone call in between sitting front row at soundcheck and front row at the gig to say a C&D had been faxed

Google it if you want to know more about it.

unique said:

prince has never sued anyone,

oh yes he has.

Uptown.

suomynona

Nope... but have heard stories as well... I had a few blogs and posted lots of Prince stuff... no cease and desist letters. Though I didn't actually have the mail coming to my house, so who knows...

Controversy fanzine,

Prince family,

Uptown,

Housequake.com

errant said:

unique said:

prince has never sued anyone,

oh yes he has.

Uptown.

suomynona

no he hasn't he never sued any of those, or the ones thedance mentions. he just fires off threats but has never actually taken any of them to court, nevemind succeeded in actually winning his case and suing someone

thedance said:

Controversy fanzine,

Prince family,

Uptown,

Housequake.com

I meant individual people

Can he sue you for using his song titles?

I've not been sued, but I have been screwed.

Crystal Ball

NPS

Blenheim Palace

NPGMC

the list goes on and on....

oh lawd call the law

[Edited 5/1/11 17:16pm]

yeah, many times on youtube. he (i mean his people) removed my... i guess... three accounts (Princelicous, loveyoursign and showmeyouract) . but i'm still uploading his videos

SquirrelMeat said:

Romeoblu said:

I got a cease and desist emails and about 6 emails and messages from the Web Sheriff.

I also got an email, telling me that a 'party' had requested my contact info concerning a legal matter. So I sent the web sheriff rep my info. I told him "all you need to do is ask, you know as well as I KNOW, you have no case and neither you nor Prince is going to follow through with this matter...."

and they did not.

(has he ever really sued ANY of the people?)

Yes

Yes, it's not big or so but still,

My youtubechannel was almost hitting the 1million views, but got warned and banned by the NPG.

At that moment, I was the only one offering video footage of the Superbowl show.

the main thing I remember was the little copyright notice on the emails and messages from the Web Sheriff. Saying that we could not divulge the content of the message to anyone other than our lawyers. I posted all of mine on the ones I got in the descriptions and in the comments. They never said anything about it. (I finally took down the other videos they were complaining about. the other they took down the others they just threaten legal action)

I remember UPTOWN had to stage a huge defense and countersuit as i recall. Alex Hahn headed that up and I am shocked more people weren't grateful to him for his time and effort to keep UPTOWN able to publish.

What sort of idiot sues his fans? Oh yeah... I know now.

802 said:

I've heard of it, but I've never heard the stories. Except for that baby incident.

I don't know how many people he's sued, but I got a nasty letter from youtube after I posted a video of me and my 2 year old daughter singing 15 seconds of Little Red Corvette. I assumed they took it down cuz of my singing, but it was cuz of copyright issues. Cuz you all know, 15 seconds of a fat guy and a toddler singing his song is gonna hurt his bottom line.

EleanorK said:

Can he sue you for using his song titles?

He might sue you if you breathe too much of his air.

802 said:

I was forced to take down a picture I took at Paisley Park during the Xenophobia festival. I posted it on my blog page I used to do. It was a picture of the outside of the building looking in. I got some stupid cease and desist letter. The site had NOTHING to do with Prince except for I mentioned that I went and I posted the picture. It was a picture of the chalk writing everyone did on the cement with a background of PP. I still buy his music but I have to admit I am not as big of a fan anymore since then. It really changed my view of him quite a bit. Im glad actually because there is SO much music out there that is honestly better than Prince and all of these years I had my Prince blinders on.

802 said:

I've heard of it, but I've never heard the stories. Except for that baby incident.

The "baby incident" was Universal Music Publishing, not Prince (technically)

The only fan(s) sued by Prince were the Uptown Magazine team.

There have however been several close calls during the time of the Prince Fans United organisation (this site itself was heavily threatened with a lawsuit at the time), however a contractual settlement was reached.

So it was all a myth. Good news.

802 said:

So it was all a myth. Good news.

I wouldn't go so far as calling it a myth.

Using various agencies and lawyers to aggresively pursue your fans for minor infringments is not normal behaviour for any artist.

OK, there is a line between threatening to sue your fans and actually taking them to court but the only real reason only one has made it to this point is becuase a kind fan (Alex Hahn) went to the trouble of persuading his boss to do the work pro-bono.

Only once PFU responded to the Housequake / prince.org / Princefams threats in a confident (and very public) manner did Prince's representatives back down. In all other cases, the fans have backed down, mainly due to fear of liability - something which in my opinion has been exploited.

OK, there are genuine cases where people making money from fans should be supported (one thing I personally abhor is "free" bootleg releases being resold) but these have historically been in the minority.

Gav said:

802 said:

So it was all a myth. Good news.

I wouldn't go so far as calling it a myth.

Using various agencies and lawyers to aggresively pursue your fans for minor infringments is not normal behaviour for any artist.

OK, there is a line between threatening to sue your fans and actually taking them to court but the only real reason only one has made it to this point is becuase a kind fan (Alex Hahn) went to the trouble of persuading his boss to do the work pro-bono.

Only once PFU responded to the Housequake / prince.org / Princefams threats in a confident (and very public) manner did Prince's representatives back down. In all other cases, the fans have backed down, mainly due to fear of liability - something which in my opinion has been exploited.

OK, there are genuine cases where people making money from fans should be supported (one thing I personally abhor is "free" bootleg releases being resold) but these have historically been in the minority.

I meant, just the suing everyone part.