At least this is in keeping with his image (which may have been the intent). I remember a few years ago Garth Brooks made a big stink trying to prevent people from selling used CDs.

Maybe you have to be a little bit pixilated to work in show business.

He may as well bring back the darn symbol.

BTW, how you been, La Shawn?

Prince put out some pretty good music in the day. I haven’t paid much attention to this recent stuff except to see some of his performances at awards shows, etc. which were knock outs. I don’t know how I feel about his quest to claim his copyright. I haven’t followed the story much, but in general if you let people abuse your bought and paid for, earned legal protections, then they eventually become worthless. But, then again, what does the law really mean these days? Ask 12-20 million illegal aliens.

Have fun in Vegas!

As for me, topics on faith, culture, digital technology (how it affects music sales, books, blogs, the long tail, etc.), and, occasionally, how these three things intersect, will be followed with interest.

Your blog is well written, edifying and provocative but it was your comment section that took it over the top. In fact, I suspect you spent an enormous amount of time monitoring and cultivating the comments. (probably one of the reasons you stopped taking comments so often, eh?) As a result, you had the highest quality blog on the net.

Your monitoring filtered out the crass, vulgar and thoughtless comments and allowed quality, well thought out yet still diverse comments that gave your readers a better understanding of your positions on current issues. Further, your comments to the comments enhanced your view points and likely converted some liberals to a more conservative point of view. (Not me, though.)

Reading commenters like Heliotrope, Tiffany, Shade and JohnD…and your interaction with them helped me to see and understand different perspectives/sides on issues about which you wrote.

I will continue to read your blog on whatever topic you write because you’re a good writer, but I miss reading your commenters and your iteraction with them.

You know, I remember when Prince starting selling music through his web site several years ago. This suing business could be a tactic to generate traffic and interest.

We will have to wait and see what the Purple one is really trying to achieve. On the surface he could be just trying to drive more traffic to his own site.

i love how honest you are. i’m going to keep reading no matter which direction you decide to take.

Eddie

I look at it this way, Prince could profit off of people posting his work as long as they give proper attribution. It’s like free advertisement.

I think the fact that Prince is doing all this is a testament to his age. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Isn’t he in his fifties?

(Getting into the spirit of Web 2.0, and this post. Too tired to come up with something orignal. My parenthetical statement is a value-add and makes this a unique creation, no attribution necessary)

What’s coming out of YouTube, these days is actually far more creative than mainstream media. You can always place in informal copyright around anything you publish.

Although many believe that “copyright” as we know it is dead.

We are actually going back to basics, I think—where money and profits are taken out of the equation, –back to a time when it was all about who was most creative, and the artistry….as opposed to the bottom line.

Or, will greed overtake YouTube and MySpace, eventually, also, someday ????