September 13, 2007 8:09 PM
Rock Music Icon Prince Takes on YouTube, eBay and Piratebay
As if the copyright lawsuit thrown by various entertainment companies towards popular video sharing sites and other web sites that violates the copyright law is not enough, here comes another lawsuit, this time coming from a major music player, rock icon, and artist formerly known as Prince.
Prince is filing a lawsuit against YouTube, eBay and the Piratebay, a BitTorrent tracking site for encouraging piracy and violating copyright protection laws. The rock star has hired the services of Web Sheriff, a UK-based web police company to track down sites which have Prince’s musical properties without his permission. Web Sheriff sends notices to these sites to take down Prince’s materials from their sites.
However, this seemed to be a weak strategy as some site owners refuse to heed on Web Sheriff’s notices. Hence, bringing his battle into the court room is perhaps the better way to fight for what Prince’s believe is a violation of the copyright protection law.
eBay was quick to react on Prince’s planned action and Hani Durzy, a spokesman for eBay said that eBay is doing its best to protect the properties of musicians and artists whose products they sell in their sites.
"The bottom line for us is that counterfeit or pirated goods are illegal and have no place on eBay, We would be happy to work with Prince and his representatives to show them how they can work with us to make sure any infringing items come down.", Durzy told News.com.
YouTube, Google’s video sharing site which is also facing a barrage of lawsuits from other owners of copyrighted materials has a very long statement, issued by Zahavah Levine, Chief counsel for YouTube.
"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. We have great partnerships with major music labels all over world that understand the benefit of using YouTube as another way to communicate with their fans."
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