• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, November 8, 2007

The musician Prince recently stunned some of his most ardent supporters by demanding that they remove photos and images of him from Web sites they created in his honor.

Now operators of fan sites are fighting back with the launch of "Prince Fans United," a Web page devoted to defending their use of the photos, images, lyrics and cover art. They argue that their use of the material doesn't violate Prince's copyright, and that they have the same right to post photos of celebrities as newspapers or other mainstream media outlets do.

"The law clearly provides for displaying of images of a celebrity's likeness for newsworthy events or matters which are considered to be public interest," reads a statement on the Prince Fans United site, which went live Monday. The enthusiast site operators also charge that the removal demands are "attempts to stifle all critical commentary about Prince."

The flap quietly started in September when U.K. copyright policing company Web Sheriff began sending e-mails and letters to operators of the three sites, housequake.com, princefams.com and prince.org, demanding that they take down photos and other material on the grounds that it violated Prince's copyright.

The enthusiast sites say that Prince has no legitimate copyright claim to some of the photos, including pictures of fans' "Prince-inspired tattoos and their vehicles displaying Prince-inspired license plates." They also argue that posts of copyrighted images, such as album cover art, don't violate Prince's rights because they constitute a "fair use" of the material.

But Web Sheriff said Wednesday that 3121.com--the home page of Prince and his record label, NPG--owns many of the photos that were published.

Despite the disagreement over whether the unauthorized use of the images violate Prince's copyright, many of the photos were scrubbed after Prince's representatives also sent a take-down notice to the image hosting company Photobucket, according to Karyn Avera, one of the operators of housequake.com.

Photobucket didn't return messages seeking comment.

Avera added that the final straw for the fans came when Web Sheriff sought monetary damages for the photos that had been posted. "A letter came demanding compensation for alleged infringements," she says. At that point, the Web site operators "decided they'd had enough," and went public with their dispute.

Advertising lawyer Rick Kurnit said that if the fans who posted the photos captured the images on their own cameras and therefore own the copyright, they have solid grounds to argue they're entitled to publish them even without Prince's authorization. He said that U.S. courts generally hold that celebrities can prevent their image being used to sell a product, but that publishers can use any photos they own in order to illustrate a news story.

"Prince can't legally stop people from writing about him or using his picture to illustrate something about him, if they have permission from the copyright owner," Kurnit said.