prince

Continuing an aggressive campaign to defend his copyrights, pop star Prince is preparing to file lawsuits within the next few days in three countries--including the United States--against The Pirate Bay, CNET News.com has learned.

One of the world's best-known BitTorrent indexing sites, The Pirate Bay has defiantly linked to pirated copies of films, TV shows, music videos, and other content while often boasting that it ignores Hollywood's requests to remove them. The Pirate Bay does not host any unauthorized content, but the service is internationally famous for being a highly effective file-sharing tool.

Prince will file similar … Read more

Prince can't push this mother around.

The pop star wanted YouTube to remove a clip of an infant boy dancing to his 1984 hit song "Let's Go Crazy." When the clip got scrubbed, the baby's mother cried foul and filed suit asking for damages. The woman's lawyers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) say the dancing-baby clip is the poster child for fair use.

Corynne McSherry, the EFF attorney representing the baby's mother, Stephanie Lenz, said the music on the clip is barely audible and that Lenz, from rural Pennsylvannia, posted the video … Read more

YouTube can't guarantee that its new filtering system will catch every case of piracy. But one company says it can help plug the hole.

Web Sheriff, the British company hired by performers such as Prince and the Village People to protect their music from Web piracy, is now branching into a new service on the heels of Monday's announcement by YouTube.

The juggernaut video-sharing site owned by Google rolled out a long-awaited filtering technology that's designed to automatically detect whether a piece of digital video uploaded to the site is pirated or not.

Here's the rub: … Read more

After witnessing so many cheesy Wii accessories flood the market this year, it comes as welcome relief to see some decent equipment finally being made for the console. Prince has solved that problem, at least where Wii Tennis is concerned, with its own branded racquet contoller designed to fit the Wiimote snugly in its handle.

The pint-sized racquets, which come in various colors, put to shame accessories such as the Brando version introduced earlier this year. Given the Wii's enormous success, it's somewhat surprising that more sports equipment brands haven't gotten into the act for the obvious … Read more

Editor's note: This blog initially misstated the format of the Prince album giveaway. They were CDs.

Radiohead, the band known for the hit songs "Creep," "Bullet Proof" and "Paranoid Android," announced on its Web site Sunday evening that fans can pay whatever they want for the band's new album, In Rainbows.

In addition to the digital version of In Rainbows, the group is also offering a boxed set of two 12-inch LPs and two CDs with artwork enclosed in a customized sleeve, for about $80. The site says that the merchandise will … Read more

Somebody combined the Village People's hit song, "YMCA," with footage of a dancing Adolf Hitler and posted the clip to YouTube. Now the company that owns the rights to the band's music is preparing to sue YouTube.

John Giacobbi, president of Web Sheriff, which hunts down pirated material on the Web and tries to get it removed, said his company has sent 500 "take-down" notices to YouTube. Each time the video is pulled, someone else uploads another copy. Giacobbi believes that YouTube has the ability to screen for copyright content in the same way … Read more

UPDATE: In an attempt to "reclaim the Internet," Prince is preparing to file lawsuits against YouTube, eBay and The Pirate Bay, for allegedly encouraging copyright violations, according to one of his representatives.

The rock star has hired Web Sheriff, a British-based company that specializes in hunting down pirated content on the Web, to launch a legal campaign against companies that wrongfully profit from the artist's work, according to John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff's president.

Prince plans to file suit in both the United States and the U.K., and has hired a top Swedish law firm to … Read more

Next Sunday, Prince fans in the United Kingdom will be able to get a new 10-song CD, Planet Earth, simply by buying a newspaper.

The Mail on Sunday has bundled CDs several times before, and they usually have sold about 2.5 million papers with these promotions. By way of comparison, the top-selling album this year reached sales of only 1.7 million copies in the U.S. as of July 4. So this is a no-brainer for Prince: he immediately gets his music into the hands of 2.5 million people, some of whom might then buy concert tickets, … Read more