Singer Prince is suing Facebook users for millions over copyright infringement.
The lawsuit filed Monday in the Northern District of California seeks damages of $1million each from 22 different people – a total of $22million – for posting links to bootlegs of live shows.
The filing lists Prince Rogers Nelson as the plaintiff and names only two people, the other 20 are shown by online user names. It was first reported by ******* Freak.
‘The Defendants in this case engage in massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince's material,’ the lawsuit claims.
One of the individuals had 363 infringing links to file sharing services hosting Prince bootlegs, the suit claims
Many of them have Prince-related user names such as ‘PurpleHouse2’ and ‘PurpleKissTwo,’ but one of them also goes by ‘TheUltimateBootlegExperience.’
The two named Facebook users are Dan Chodera and Karina Jindrova. A MailOnline search did not immediately turn up any profiles under the two names with links related to Prince.
The majority of the links were on fan pages hosted on Facebook, but also Google’s Blogger, ‘to accomplish their unlawful activity,’ according to the lawsuit.
Prince has suffered and is continuing to suffer damages in an amount according to proof, but no less than $1 million per Defendant.’
Some of the material being passed around dates back to a 1983 live show in Chicago, but most of it is more recent.
The suit charges the defendants with bootlegging, copyright infringement and unauthorized fixation ad trafficking in sound recordings.
The singer was denied claims made in a 2007 lawsuit suing The Pirate Bay over similar claims, according to reports.
I'm a huge stan of Prince, and this doesn't bother me one bit.
The man doesn't want his concerts bootlegged. Respect that or get sued?
You never know if one day he plans to release all of that concert footage.
