• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, September 14, 2007

The musician Prince is mulling copyright infringement lawsuits against YouTube and other Web sites that allegedly offer pirated videos of him performing.

Press reports say that he's already demanded that sites take down more than 2,000 clips on YouTube alone. He's also tapped Web Sheriff to help him police the sites for bootleg clips.

The move is unusual because that type of copyright enforcement is usually done by record labels or entertainment companies, as opposed to the artists themselves. In fact, some content creators -- including, for instance, Michael Moore -- publicly take the position that exposure on sites like YouTube helps drum up enthusiasm and grow consumer interest.

Prince's spokesman complained to the media that if YouTube and other sites can filter out pornography, they should be able to filter out copyrighted content. But the truth is, figuring out whether a particular clip violates someone's copyright is a lot more complicated than evaluating whether material is pornographic.

Consider, some copyright holders endorse the appearance of their clips on sites like YouTube, but there's often no way to know simply by looking at a clip whether it was uploaded with the copyright holders' permission or not. What's more, the law doesn't appear to require sites like YouTube to proactively assess whether a particular clip is pirated and bar it before it appears. Rather, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act seems to give these sites a pass, as long as they remove clips once copyright holders complain about them.