Prince Files Lawsuit Against Music Bootleggers

Pop legend Prince has filed a lawsuit against Facebook and Blogger users who are believed to have distributed several of his live performances without permission.
A copyright lawsuit was filed on January 16th in the Northern District of California against 22 individuals who are believed to have leaked and shared several live performances. Prince is seeking $1 million dollars in damages from each user along with a permanent injunction to prevent the individuals from doing further harm.

As of now only two defendants have been named in the suit while the remaining John Does are being recognized by their online handles.

“Defendants rely on either Google’s Blogger platform or Facebook, or both, to accomplish their unlawful activity,” court papers read. “Rather than publishing lawful content to their blogs, they typically publish posts that list all of the songs performed at a certain Prince live show and then provide a link to a file sharing service where unauthorized copies of the performance can be downloaded.”

Prince’s lawyers have uncovered more than 363 illicit links on just one of the websites and believe the discovery will “continue to cause substantial, immediate and irreparable injury.”

For those who have viewed DMCA Force‘s Piracy Statistics page, you probably have noticed the amount of pirate URLS we encounter that are blog based. It isn’t a surprise for us to learn about online users distributing copyrighted content through these blogging platforms, given the easiness and quick ability to share.

If you’re concerned or worried about where your original content is being distributed online, please do not hesitate to contact us for an in depth complimentary evaluation.