Most of you by now have heard of Prince being very controlling of his music, and why not? When you're an independent artist who happens to be a musical genius and who has been screwed over royally by your former label, you have the right to not be fooled twice. Some of you may have noticed that during our Top 100 Soul/R&B Countdown that we did not post any actual music of Prince's lest we feel the wrath of Khan...er, His Majesty. Earlier this year, Prince invoked the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force YouTube to remove a video of Prince performing Radiohead's "Creep," even though he did not record it first. In fact, members of the band were not able to view Prince's performance because the video was so swiftly removed. Now comes word that Prince and Universal Music Publishing are in court wrangling over, get this, a video a mother placed on YouTube of her child dancing to "Let's Go Crazy" for thirty seconds. Prince and Universal again are invoking the DMCA. Here at SBHQ, response to this news ranges from snickering to straight up seizure-mimicking eye rolling. What say you, readers? Is Prince doing what's fair to his artistry and bottom line by blocking all of his music from being shared without his explicit permission or is he just alienating fans who want to share his music with the world?
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