Prince sues to protect copyright, Trent Reznor encourages illegal downloads

by Brad Linder Sep 13th 2007

Musician Prince (at least that's what we think we're supposed to call him these days) plans to sue internet sites including eBay, YouTube, and The Pirate Bay for illegally distributing his music. Because that's why people aren't buying his CDs anymore. It has nothing to do with the fact that he's a bit over the hill as musicians go or that his eccentric ways might be a bit offputing. Nope. It's piracy.

Prince argues that the sites aren't doing everything they can to prevent piracy. After all, his representatives point out, if YouTube can effectively keep pornography off its site, how hard can it be to remove user-uploaded Prince videos? He may have a point there.

Meanwhile, another musician, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame has a different message for his fans. Speaking in China, Reznor suggested that he'd rather have fans in that country download songs illegally than pay for pirated CDs. Of course the best option is to buy a legal copy of the CD, he says, but Reznor admits that's not always easy for music fans in China.

We wonder which musician the record industry is more likely to support.

Tags: music, nine-inch-nails, piracy, pirate-bay, prince, trent-reznor

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Ted Wallingford said 9:02PM on 9-13-2007

Hey, Prince still pwns. Sorry guys, "Purple Rain" is a classic number. "Head like a Hole?" eh, not so much. Reznor makes far more sense in this case, though.

JamesP said 9:02PM on 9-13-2007

Head like a Hole might not be as classic, but I think Closer is bound to be remembered. Plus Reznor still churns out decent music these days...now I'm going to go listen to Survivalism...

keyesdt said 9:02PM on 9-13-2007

Never did care for Putz..I mean Prince... too many purple "somethings" in his life. And as for "pirateing" songs, well, though I can't encourage it I DO condone it. Let's face it, how many songs lately have been 'remakes' of a previous artists song? Many, many, way too many I say, When current "artists", (I use that term loosely, and only out of respect for those who are), quit copying OTHER peoples songs, THEN and ONLY THEN will anyone have the right to b***h about anyone copying theirs!!!

koan said 8:41AM on 9-14-2007

Reznor said the same in Italy two weeks ago...

zwestbrook said 8:47AM on 9-14-2007

not to mention reznor gave away nearly the entire year zero album via usb drives and the nin site...

"The USB drive was simply a mechanism of leaking the music and data we wanted out there. The medium of the CD is outdated and irrelevant. It's really painfully obvious what people want — DRM-free music they can do what they want with. If the greedy record industry would embrace that concept I truly think people would pay for music and consume more of it"

Jason said 9:12AM on 9-14-2007

So where else is someone supposed to see Prince videos if not YouTube or other similar sites? It's not like they play his videos often on MTV/VH-1. Maybe VH-1 Soul, but still. I would *think* that artists would want their videos to spread over the net.. more exposure.

John said 9:17AM on 9-14-2007

Trent Reznor would love GigaTribe: http://www.gigatribe.com

WolvenSpectre said 12:33PM on 9-14-2007

This shows a bit of ignorance on the part of Brad Linder. Most of Prince's public eccentricities were do to his battle AGAINST the big record labels. Early in his career he signed a relatively onerous contract, and even after prince paid for his own recording facilities, recorded the music on his own, and did a large part of the publicizing of his music, his record company would come in and say 'we own your music anyway and you have to preform when we say you do".

They claimed ownership over the name "Prince" and all of its uses. He finished off the contract making sure that they had only what was to the letter of the contract, and he had full ownership of the prolific catalogue that he hadn't released yet. Until the contract ended he preformed with the word "SLAVE" on his face.

Unfortunately the ownership and rights to the name "Prince" was still in dispute. The only way he could preform was under a stage name, but he was informed that they would then have rights to the stage name and could legally keep him from performing. This is when he and his lawyers came up with the brilliant tactic of naming himself a symbol, which legally they could not claim ownership of. This is the same reason that he eventually changed it to "The Artist formally know as Prince".

Finally when Prince's name was absolutely and indisputably free and clear he took his name back. Unfortunately because of all the ill will with the recording industry many of the distribution channels that were open to most artist were no longer available, so he skipped them all together and gave away his albums as part of the tickets to his performances and did publicity releases of his music through newspapers for free.

Remember that many of these artist are out of touch and are relying on others to give them the accurate picture when it comes to the tech world, and many of these experts are knowledgeable but only in certain area, and don't have the accurate understanding of things many of us users do. For example, they don't realize that when it comes to YouTube, the majority of all filtering of objectionable or questionable content is filtered by the users, not some mysterious technology in the background.

SomeAudioGuy said 1:24PM on 9-14-2007

Strikes me odd that Prince would try to sue eBay...

I wholeheartedy support Reznor on filesharing over buying from a pirate. I say shut them all down.

In fact I still disagree with this definition of "piracy". To be a "Pirate" you need to profit from the distribution of content you don't own. People who file share are just "Thieves" not "Pirates"...

calling said 4:08PM on 9-14-2007

Do people actually watch Prince music video?

dm3sh said 10:36PM on 9-14-2007

After reading this article I can see the difference between who is the recording artist and who is the performing artist.
Peer2peer may do one thing above everything else it makes the artists sing for their supper. Which is the way it really should be. I maybe wrong, but most artist tied to contracts make their money performing not through sales of albums
Maybe it will force them to tour more, and maybe lower these ridiculously high ticket prices when they do, to encourage people to see them.
Good on peer2peer if it weeds out the show ponies from the true rockers

maths said 11:49AM on 9-15-2007

You can read the full text of what Trent Reznor told me in China as I have documented it at http://www.music2dot0.com/archives/36
Basically, he's against others profiting at fans' expense - though the pirate CD guys are mentioned, his beef is more against labels who continually rip off fans.

Mark H said 9:40PM on 10-14-2007

If they sold a CD for $8-$9.00 I would buy it. But when vinyl records were big, and I mean that in every sense of the word, they sold for less than the current cd's do. Not to mention a DVD can be picked up at walmart for less than a lot of CD's, make sense of that, a movie crew, actors, producers, and so many more people involved in making a movie that you can buy for $9.95. A cd only takes a fraction of the people and yet they try and take a teenager for a ride at $18. a pop. You see the key word there didn't you? Teenager- mindless, unsensable, won't listen to logic person with cold hard cash, or access to it (parents pockets). More adults buy DVD's than teenagers do, but adults use thier heads and won't spend that much on something they can get PV'ed at blockbuster.

I say Nine Inch is on right path. Eventually there will be a few web sites that pop up where you can read about up coming artists and how to obtain thier songs without a big record label. I say to hell with them (the record labels). Eventually this will even tank Simon Cowhead because then even an unknown can record, produce and distribute his own album without some obnoxious fool holding a contract to your life.

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