You know, I’ll probably never understand calling the lawyers out to go after fansites.

Prince is a great guitarist but he needs to remember who’s butts are in the seats and buying his albums if he’s sending the lawyers after his fans.

via Grooveshark:

Prince and an army of lawyers are working to disband several large web communities dedicated to the pop star. Several Web sites have received cease and desist notices to discontinue use of all photographs, images, lyrics, album covers and anything else Prince wants.

All images? Are you kidding me? Prince better get his lawyers over to Google — wait, no, Perfect 10 already tried that in court and lost.

What if you were a celebrity?
I’m certainly not a celebrity, but let’s assume for a moment I did something that made me one.

The content of this blog, including the pictures unless otherwise noted are all copyrighted, but I wouldn’t try to prevent anybody from setting up a Hmm fan site and I’d find it reasonable that some portion of content was referenced and used. Nobody needs my permission for Fair Use and with a fansite especially I’d be willing to provide additional latitude, wouldn’t you?

I might politely and personally ask a site that was using too much of the content to be cool about it, but would I call up the lawyers and start sending C&Ds? No way. I know, I know, easy to say when you aren’t in the almighty shower of the great Purple Rain One, but let’s be real. It’s one thing to go after splogs which suck the life out of your content and make money from your efforts without giving anything back. It’s another thing to break out the lawyers on your freaking fans who are helping to promote and support you.

Didn’t Prince learn anything from Metallica? Is there another side to this that makes sense?

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