The Purple One is at it again: he just filed a lawsuit against 22 Facebook fans, in the amount of $1 million each, for posting bootleg videos! 

Prince has been known for suing fans in the past and, according to Time Magazine, this time is no different from the last: the target seems to be Prince's own fans. Time has obtained a copy of the lawsuit, in which Prince and his lawyers state that "as part of 'an interconnected network of bootleg distribution' -- the defendants are causing irreparable damage to the musician through copyright infringement, as well as by encouraging other fans to participate in that same infringement by making bootlegged performances available for download." 

This brings up an interesting debate, according to Entertainment Weekly: what really constitutes Fair Use, in this age of the Internet? You have artists like Dave Matthews and (at the time) The Grateful Dead, who encourage their fans to record their live performances (this even goes back to the tape trading days). You then have artists like Prince and Bob Dylan, who use the courts to circumvent fans' recording of their live performances. Who's right?

On one hand, artists should have rights over the work they created -- both Prince and Bob Dylan come from an era where artists were unaware of the dangers of the music industry, and as an end result, unscrupulous music industry professionals would take full advantage of the artists, owning their rights to everything in perpetuity. So it would make sense that they would want an almost-draconian hold over their creations. On the other hand, Time Magazine sat down with Childish Gambino, and he brought up a very interesting point: "trying to control music on the Internet is like a baker trying to charge money from passersby who want to smell the bread." 

Nevertheless, the whole discussion may be moot after all: not long after news broke that Prince filed the lawsuit against the fans, TMZ reported that he dropped the lawsuit. According to Prince's lawyer, they dropped the suit because the bootleggers complied with the requests to take down the video. "Because of the recent pressure, the bootleggers have now taken down the illegal downloads and are no longer engaging in piracy. We recognize the fans craving for as much material as possible, but we'd prefer they get it from us directly than from third parties who are scalpers rather than real fans of our work," he said.