Last week unofficial Prince fansites claimed that they had received cease and desist orders from the rockstar's camp. Housequake.com, princefans.com and prince.org claimed that Prince would sue if the photos, images, lyrics, album covers and anything linked to him on the site were not removed. The three Web sites have since formed Prince Fans United, and are working together to fight back against his efforts, saying it's a violation of their free speech and the "bullying tactics" are trying to "stifle all critical commentary about Prince." Now, the Purple One's promoter AEG has retorted with a lengthy statement trying to clear up their totalitarian actions."Prince is not suing his fans, is not looking to penalise fans and nor is he looking to or inhibiting freedom of speech in any way. In fact, he is simply looking to provide Prince fans with exclusive music and images entirely free of charge, and bypassing unofficial and unauthorised phoney fan sites that exploit both consumers and artists.""The action taken earlier this week was not to shut down fansites, or control comment in any way. The issue was simply to do with in regards to copyright and trademark of images and only images, and no lawsuits have been filed.""The three sites in question have falsely positioned themselves as representatives of millions of Prince fans. In fact, many have come out in support of Prince at his official site and even on the message boards of the unofficial sites in question.""Mediation between the parties is currently resolving the matter." "Prince is breaking new ground as the first artist to take on the world's largest internet pirates bootleggers, including the notorious The Pirate Bay who have been misrepresenting themselves as a site for 'the fans'.""They are in fact exploiting copyrighted material for their commercial gain. The site has flouted constant legal notices from artists and corporations throughout the world while cashing in on advertising monies. All the time, they keep up the pretence of being an anarchist, 'free music' fansite when it is really a massive money-making venture."This isn't the first time Prince took action against copyright infringement. In September he went after YouTube and eBay because they "appear to choose not to filter out the unauthorized music and film content which is core to their business success."
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