The always litigious Prince is reportedly suing YouTube in a lawsuit that has parallels with that being pursued by MTV owners Viacom. He is suing over the appearance of music he himself owns (so, from his various self-released albums) on the video site.
As previously reported, Viacom argue that YouTube should be liable for the copyright infringement that occurs in the time that lapses between a user uploading a bit of MTV content to the video sharing website, Viacom spotting the content and YouTube taking said content down. But YouTube argue that under US copyright law – these are American cases – providing the video site takes down infringing content as soon as it is alerted of its presence on their system, they are not liable for any infringement.
The Google-owned service also add that they have been busy developing increasingly sophisticated technology so that copyright owners who do not wish to have a licensing arrangement with the video site can register their content into a database so that, in theory, if anyone tries to upload said content it will be automatically blocked.
The Viacom case is ongoing, though Google would probably point you in the direction of Universal Music’s lawsuit against the recently defunct YouTube rival Veoh, in which the major label made similar accusations about that video site, but lost their case.
Prince, though, still reckons he has a case, apparently. According to The Brisbane Times, he argues that YouTube’s filters to block copyright infringing content are ineffective. Noting that the service’s porn filters seem to work much better, he alleges that it is in YouTube’s interest to be a bit shoddy when it comes to policing the upload of unlicensed music content, because it means the unlicensed content is available until the copyright owner spots it, enhancing the service’s consumer offer during that time period.
YouTube disagree, of course. They are quoted thus: “Most content owners understand that we respect copyrights. 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”.
Claiming he is simply trying to “reclaim his art on the internet”, Prince’s people say the purple one is also planning legal action against eBay and The Pirate Bay, yeah good luck with the latter. As much previously reported, despite being a genuine innovator when it comes to engaging fans on the internet and using digital distribution to cut out record companies in the album release process, Prince nevertheless employs his lawyers against internet ventures in much the same way as a major record company. On one occasion he threatened to sue a fan site for posting photos of him.