Prince obviously wouldn't die 4 YouTube.

In fact, the "Purple Rain" purveyor is planning to take on the video-sharing giant in an effort to "reclaim his art on the Internet," according to a statement released on Prince's behalf.

Meaning, Prince is feeling litigious.

The Web-savvy artist, who was one of the first major recording stars to utilize the Internet to release new tunes and interact with fans, is planning to sue Google Inc.-owned YouTube, as well as alleged piracy-encouraging sites eBay and Pirate Bay, for copyright violation.


Very few artists have ever taken this kind of action over their rights," the singer's spokesperson said. "Yet Prince has shown time and time again he is ready to challenge the system in new ways to put artists and music first."

Gearing up to file suit in both the United States and the United Kingdom, Prince has hired British-based company Web Sheriff, which polices the Internet for pirated content and sends "take down" notices to offenders, to aid in the art reclamation, the technology site cnet.com reported Thursday.

Web Sheriff president John Giacobbi told C-Net that, over the past few weeks, his firm has removed about 2,000 unauthorized Prince-purloining clips from YouTube but that, once they're down, "there are 100 or 200 more."

"Their business model is built on making money off other people's creative work," Giacobbi said. He told Reuters that Web Sheriff has also removed about 300 seemingly benign items bearing Prince's likeness, such as mugs and keychains, from eBay

And Prince says that there's no excuse for these sites to not crack down on the copyright-violating content that inevitably makes its way online through one channel or another.

"YouTube, [eBay and Pirate Bay] are clearly able [to] filter porn and pedophile material but appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success," the statement from Prince's rep continued. "Prince strongly believes artists, as the creators and owners of their music, need to reclaim their art."

And it's widely known how much control Prince likes to retain over his music. Freaking out record company execs worldwide in July, he gave away free copies of his latest album, Planet Earth, inside the U.K. newspaper The Mail on Sunday, a week before its official release.

In a statement responding to Prince's allegations, YouTube's chief counsel, Zahavah Levine, said that his company is constantly working on ways to help artists manage their content on the site.

"Most content owners understand that we respect copyrights," Levine said. "We work every day to help them manage their content, and we are developing state-of-the-art tools to let them do that even better.

"We have great partnerships with major music labels all over the world that understand the benefit of using YouTube as another way to communicate with their fans."

The San Francisco Bay Area-based company is already embroiled in a $1 billion copyright infringement case brought by Viacom Inc., which accused YouTube of allowing thousands of unauthorized clips from its myriad networks (MTV, Nickelodeon, etc.) and Paramount Pictures to take up unopposed residence on the site.

Google maintains that YouTube is protected in this matter by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which doesn't hold service providers responsible for user-committed infractions.

EBay is also trying to fight the good fight, despite what Prince might think, according to spokesman Hani Durzy.

"The bottom line for us is that counterfeit or pirated goods are illegal and have no place on eBay," Durzy told C-Net. "We would be happy to work with Prince and his representatives to show them how they can work with us to make sure any infringing items come down."



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