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Comments on: Prince to sue The Pirate Bay

In what is likely the largest civil challenge to BitTorrent tracker, pop star will file suit in three countries against The Pirate Bay, including the U.S. Prince accuses the site of profiting illegally from the work of artists.

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Stupid lawsuit behaviour...
by _t3h November 9, 2007 5:23 PM PST
>In addition, Prince is also preparing to take civil action against
>some of the Israel-based companies that advertise on The Pirate
>Bay, according to John Giacobbi, Web Sheriff's president.

Yeah, let's sue anyone who advertises on the site, they must be responsible for what people do
with it...

>Besides the U.S., Prince will file suit within in the next few
>days against The Pirate Bay in France, a country known for
>tough copyright laws

Yep, let's sue the people responsible in a country that he isn't in, and that they aren't in simply
because the laws are more favourable. Nice work there :)
Reply to this comment
I agree
by rhsc November 9, 2007 7:37 PM PST
Re france: Any port in a storm, as the saying goes. Maybe Prince will change his name to a skull and crossbones if the suits don't go his way.

Have a beef with someone? Sue them. Why go through other less destructive channels when there's money to be made litigating? Ugh, what a world, what a world.
Good Luck With That
by geek. November 9, 2007 5:36 PM PST
Since they don't do it for profit.
First he's against his own fans, now this?

He was the first to have the opportunity to sell directly to fans and make it work. He is so out of touch, it's sad.
Reply to this comment
Now everyone knows...
by thisislovell November 9, 2007 5:46 PM PST
If you've been paying attention to him for the past 10-15 years, you would know that Prince is:

a.) Kinda crazy.

b.) Extremely controlling over everything and anything involving him and his art.

With these lawsuits, everyone else is starting to see it too. For proof, watch "An Evening with Kevin Smith" and listen to him talk about working on a documentary for Prince.
Reply to this comment
w/e
by XoneDaGnome November 9, 2007 6:26 PM PST
Yet another Fatal attempt. France has what to do with it? The MPAA and Web Sheriff has already tried once without success. Here are some the Legal threats TPB has received: http://thepiratebay.org/legal

Enjoy.. I know I did.
Reply to this comment
lol
by dondarko November 10, 2007 8:55 PM PST
man that was hilarious...
Danger!!!!!!!
by ralfthedog November 11, 2007 12:03 PM PST
If you link to The Pirate Bay, you could be sued by Prince (AKA the Artist Formerly Known as Talented. [http://Just to make my self clear, I saw Prince on the Super Bowl last year. If you look past all of the flash, he is a very skilled artist.|http://Just to make my self clear, I saw Prince on the Super Bowl last year. If you look past all of the flash, he is a very skilled artist.])
Prince your not famous anymore
by kyle172 November 9, 2007 9:20 PM PST
Someone forgot to tell Prince the 80's have been over for a
longtime
Reply to this comment
Some respect please...
by SURREALE November 12, 2007 10:53 AM PST
I am not a Prince superfan but I know what talent is and he has been at the cutting edge of music for a long time. Currently, he is one of the leading advocates of delivering music to the masses without the overarching influences of greedy record labels. For a while he walked around with "slave" written on his cheek because his record label was messing with his artistic license. He also recently handed out his album to everyone who attended his live performances. The guy is legit. Are you critics expecting broke-ass startup bands to sue The Pirate Bay and other folk who are making it more difficult for new artists to ever make a living doing what they love?

The dude's a legend as far as I'm concerned--from Wikipedia: In the 1980s and early 1990s, Prince was romantically linked to many celebrities, including Vanity (also known as Denise Matthews), Madonna, Sheila E, Anna Fantastic,Carmen Electra,Kirstie Alley, Whitney Houston, Apollonia Kotero, Kim Basinger, Sheena Easton, Troy Beyer, Susanna Hoffs and Nona Gaye. He married his backup singer and dancer, Mayte Garcia on Valentine's Day, 1996

C'mon people, Tommy Lee was married to Pamela Anderson and now he has Prince's seconds. Some respect, please. So before you write your stupid little comment, think about whether you can get tens of thousands of people at the next Super Bowl screaming and singing to your music.
Some say to just share more Prince music....
by Jim Hubbard November 9, 2007 9:21 PM PST
"To get it across to the little #@%%&^, that the music industry is dead as he once knew it - simply share all of the Prince stuff that you can get your hands on!" - that's what I have seen others saying in response to Prince's attempts to grasp at the memories of what was - you know, when he put out music that people actually wanted to hear...

And, just like the Metallica debacle, I'm quite sure that will happen.

Ironic, isn't it? Prince is encouraging the very thing he is suing to stop.

I know it must be hard to actually have to work for a living - but that's life and Prince should go ahead and learn that now.
Reply to this comment
No one wants it though
by richto November 10, 2007 4:19 AM PST
No one wants his new music though.

He gave his last album away free on the cover of newspapers and it was so awful that even for free no one wanted it.
Isn't Prince Famous Enough?
by savagesteve13 November 10, 2007 1:55 AM PST
He's already invaded our public radio, CD collection, football halftime shows, movie houses.

The little purple elf must be snorting some really expensive cocaine if he's worried about his percieved cashflow dent caused by TPB.
Reply to this comment
Lets sue them all
by vertig0730 November 10, 2007 4:35 AM PST
Well Prince is at it he might want to sue the ISP's and DNS providers. He could say if PriateBay was not listed in the DNS lists his work could not be copied or stolen.

Or.

He could sue Al Gore I mean he did invent the internet and start this whole thing.
Reply to this comment
Its amazing
by Wickedashtray November 10, 2007 5:24 AM PST
The Pirate bay does NOT host illegal files, thats the bottom line. Whether you feel its "ethical" or not is irrelevant, they are not breaking the law. A bittorrent link is the equivalent of a URL found via Google. It like prosecuting Google for a link to child porn rather than prosecute those actually responsible for the media. Unfortunately the "chosen people" who run our media companies would find the cost prohibitive to prosecute those who are truly breaking the law....those pirating the actually program/media in question. So they go after a few guys who they can hold up as an example. Its amazing how these media companies are simply continuing what is essentially shoveling against the tide. Their distribution models are obsolete but instead of changing they want to litigate their way back into the mothers womb. I hope The Pirate Bay emerges victorious but given the money grubbing reach of the chosen ones I don't have much optimism.
Reply to this comment
true dat
by be_free November 10, 2007 9:58 AM PST
the problem with US lawyers is that they think US copyright law applies worldwide. i've worked for a american based copyright bureau based in sweden targeting alleged infringers for very popular pictures belonging to a book publishing company world wide. our primary tactic was to scare individuals with legalese language and intimidating wording, and it almost always worked against individuals, regardless of what country they are from. but if the individual actually knows the law, we ALWAYS had to drop it, simply because it wasn't worth pursuing. also, we had to pretend like India and China didn't exist since it was simply too challenging to pursue anything over there. suing people in the US, of course, was a walk in the park. we won a half million dollar case against Aerosmith with a couple of days work. that's how the US society operates.

since then I have stepped away from the dark side.

personally i love The Pirate Bay, and as a swede now living in CA, it allows me to get access to Scandinavian TV and radio shows that I can't get here, including very popular out-of-print children's programs. i don't own a TV since American network TV SUCKS. US cable TV is way over priced, so I'm basically using TPB as TV and an occasional movie on demand service. with my introduction to TPB a few years ago my media consumption has increased considerably, and I now spend thousands of dollars each year on DVDs and CDs (compared to a few hundred before). I also donate money to PBS who's programs that I tend to prefer.

this is what attorneys and non-internet culture people don't understand, it's a diverse world out there, and there is plenty of moral in a global community that interacts and support each other very well. but they just see the world in black and white with their corporate glasses on.
can the pursuit narrowband profits hinder progress
by wildchild_plasma_gyro November 10, 2007 5:46 AM PST
Ok so Prince wants to make money for his work and to hold a base of respecting fans.

Consumers want as much as they can get on their big home storage systems not to mention want to have accesses to more services possible with faster internet technology.

Pirate bay wants to make money.

The ability to share data from many sources is the very fondation of the internet making it as universal as it is.

The problem here is that the coperate view is too narrow to allow the internet to progress and yet the coperate model is by far the dominant model.

My hope here is that the co-operative world of networking and the coperate world of banking clash to from the best options.

It's up to us us to make sure that this is so and that the Narrow interest band continues to widen in a way that respects the creative issues of human efforts.

Things are moving this way more and more each year but so too are many groups used to the perpetuation of the current economic model curently in process.

So anyway i hope that things work out well here.
Reply to this comment
Damn Good!
by telestarnext November 10, 2007 6:16 AM PST
YES! Maybe we could buy some kind of INTERNET CREDITS like the Carbon Credits al gore buys. Thank god for TOR and FREENET
Reply to this comment
Prince get a clue
by burnmanp November 10, 2007 6:57 AM PST
Does Prince not know and see what happened to
Metallica after they sued Napster? They all but
disappeared as a band and few people wanted
their music anymore. Maybe Prince needs to learn
a lesson from Radio Head and NIN.
Reply to this comment
The Has-Been formerly known as Prince...
by imacpwr November 10, 2007 8:27 AM PST
Prince's been suing everyone under the sun INCLUDING his fans
because the only income he's got left is that of his old music. Let's
hope Prince drowns in his own Purple Rain..
Reply to this comment
Work for free!
by whalil November 10, 2007 9:28 AM PST
We should all work for free, put up millions of our own dollars to create our products or services and just put it out there for whoever wants it whenever they want it. And just let God or the good will of people to provide for our needs and wants.
Reply to this comment
Good idea.
by ethana2 November 11, 2007 4:48 PM PST
...in the bygone age when production costed money, your proposition would have sounded like a bad idea.

Jamendo.com
Open your ears.
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Wow, I'm sure the demand on downloading his music is overwhelming !
by markab21 November 10, 2007 9:32 AM PST
All 14 of the people wanting to download Prince music will be very upset if they can no longer do so.

Sounds like Prince is a little narsistic.
Reply to this comment
Wow, I'm sure the demand on downloading his music is overwhelming !
by markab21 November 10, 2007 9:33 AM PST
All 14 of the people wanting to download Prince music will be very upset if they can no longer do so.

Sounds like Prince is a little narcissistic in his own views of his popularity.
Reply to this comment
I would never pirate Prince songs
by Andy kaufman November 10, 2007 11:06 AM PST
because Prince is a crapping singer. I don't like his music and they couldn't pay me to listen to them.

I like it better when his songs are sung by different artists that have way more talent that Prince claims to have. He should rename his album as "Purple Pain" because it is painful for me to listen to it.
Reply to this comment
Who's songs would you pirate?
by whalil November 11, 2007 7:37 AM PST
Hey, you might not be the best at what you do for a living but are you just going to give away your products or services to anyone who wants them or do you want to get paid for all of your work even if its not the greatest quality?
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PIRATE BAY
by mpvgrowth November 10, 2007 4:02 PM PST
THIS IS AS BAD AS STEALING CABLE. I WONDER IF PIRATE BAY IS WILLING TO OFFER FREE ADVERTISING AND FREE SERVICES FOR EVER?
Reply to this comment
how long
by chonnom November 10, 2007 6:21 PM PST
he put out a few good songs like 20 years ago; how long can he expect to be paid for work her did that long ago? I would love to be paid for 20 years for something I did once.
Reply to this comment
Not Entirely True...
by pilaa November 11, 2007 7:32 PM PST
Prince writes, produces, and arranges music for many other artists and gets PAID for these works as well. He worked with Tevin Campbell and still earns royalties for his early works as well as work he did with Chaka Khan, Sinead O'Conner, Morris Day and the Time, Appoliona Kitaro, Vanity, and anyone else who either samples or remakes his tunes. He also has a vast music vault of songs for future release should he decide to do so.
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prince to sue pirate bay
by krosavcheg November 10, 2007 10:58 PM PST
I personally wouldn't walk across the street to hear prince, but I do sympathize with the little fella.....doesn't even know where his next million's coming from.
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