Listen,
Prince can do what he wants with his music. That's the bottom line.
You oughta better feel happy to get the chance to hear his unreleased music for such a long time, through all these motherfuckers of bootleggers who don't give a damn about Prince. They even don't give a damn about music at all. They just want money³, and nothing else.

Remember the price of the boots at the end of the eighties? extreme high (fro vinyl!).. then when CD's became more common, the prices still were incredible high, if not impossible. And the quality sucked big time (untill halfway 90's they got better)!

So nowadays boots are more or less still expensive.
I'm glad there's something like the internet. It caused a huge difference for bootleggers to earn more in the beginning, but soon th filesharing made it hard for them.
Nowadays fans can nearly find anything on the net, when they are a bit computerminded and creative in their search.

So in a way, i think it's Prince's right to defend what belongs to him. Only, i realy don't get it that he attacks fansites, rather than bootleg-makers-sites.
I even think that fans should be able to share files thorugh the internet for free. These fans payd for a long time for all his bills.. etc. SO if they like to share P2P music which eachothere, i hardly can't imagine it would harm Prince financially.

Anyway, we will be angry for some time, whenever something is shut down again! But when he releases something new, we all forget about what happened. So he more or less counts on that i think.
Bootleggers by the way are smart too! They try to get in contact with real big fanatic fans, so they can make them part of the process of making and distributing amongst other fans. Every fan would be glad to get contacted to buy unreleased material,even some of them to help and spread the word. Let's all be honest.
Bootleggers also pay for spreading the work, so no one wants to get any finger pointed at, and all of 'm are involved with the black money/Prince's belonging.

It's fucking complicated. I bought myself boots as well. In the end i always felt dissapointed by buying them. Actually the quality sucks, cause expectations got too high. Boots can't cmpete with official releases anyway.
But things changed over the past years. Prince's latest releases even can't compete with bootleggers lay outs anymore! The ONA LIVE box sucked big time. Even bootleggers release boxes of live material which looks better than some tof the official newer releases.
Only Prince's hand on the music is worth (a bit) more then the bootleg ones. They just registrate live music, in a very good quality if possible, but that's about it. Oh yeah, the lay out sometimes is great. But except for some pictures, there much more info to be found (depends of the bootmaker). Even the unreleased studio recordings suck from quality and creativity by bootleggers.

Still i can't seem to get some things right.
Why doesn't Prince try to find those bootleggers? I mean, this can't be that difficult?!

Then, how come so much of the unofficial material got out in the first place? Unreliable employees?
I know one thing, Prince is a controlfreak, so when he hires someone, i'm pretty sure he shows them a pilehigh contract, which first of all tells you what 'not' to do, rather than 'what' to do! So it seems very hard to believe that former employees wanted to make extra money out of unreleased material, or even try to get fired by something like this. I mean, come on, if so, Prince's garbage would've been circulating the net and ebay as well! We don't find any pieces of papers and written notes on there, or even thrownaway stuff that means a lot to fans. )) (am i going to far?)
When you know that, for instance, Prince gave a track to Robert Palmer (Lust U Always), or Madonna (By Alien Means), or to Kylie Minogue (...) as to so many others, which those artists rejected, still these tracks remain uncirculated. Which means that those people understood the art of loyalty and ownership. Or just happened to read all the little words in the accompanied lawyerpaperwork.

So if there are insiders who happened to know a lot more, and i mean who KNOW the facts, please share 'm with us, cause things might get really wrong interpreted around here.
And an uninformed fan isn't worth yelling words at Prince or his company i think, especially when they don't like what he wants to do with his own creations.
An opinion is one thing, but also can be very distructive for nothing.

One more thing. I also think that fansites, should remain fansites. Which is, fans can have pictures and if snippets of music on there. Come on, i mean, they ARE the bigest and perfect free advertising group for his music in the world.
So leave your fans alone Prince! ) But so called lists of unreleased material is something else. That's risky. But only possible to put up there, when for instance Prince's press agents release tracklists of upcomming projects which later are withdrawn by Prince himself... know what i mean?!

What disturbs me the most, is that on the OFFICIAL site, you are not democratically free to say what you want or think what you want about Prince's outlet. Knowing this, and the constant search of his lawyers bothers me too.

I repect his believes. But it would be more relevant to let everyone go into a discussion, rather then to filter them out (that's communism) if someone just doesn't agree with his thoughts.
I think democracy just makes itself strong when everyone is allowed to say freely what they want, even if it is full of hate or shit. Like that you at least know what's going on in the world.
If Prince believes so much in positivity, he should know that the real truth always will win. But it doesn't win by suppression of 'evil', or trying to close yourself in with shutting down harmless fansites.


Peace to everyone.

A very intersting opinion-I Njoyeyed reading that