$22-Million Copyright Lawsuit Over Online Videos Dropped By Prince

Apparently anti-piracy ads have it right: anyone could get into real trouble for bootlegging copyrighted material, particularly if said material belongs to Prince. The artist, formerly known as… wait, we’re not doing that anymore? Anyway, Prince filed the $22 million lawsuit against 22 bootleggers, who had reportedly uploaded recordings of his concerts online – on Facebook and other websites. Which doesn’t sound at all like people sharing their home videos for no monetary gain. Not at all.

Each poster faced having to pay up to a million in damages – a sum that sounds ever so slightly unreasonable, given that the posters likely weren’t making any money off the back of Prince’s work.

The lawsuit was filed a couple of weeks ago, but now, according to TMZ, Prince is dropping it already. We’ll go ahead and take this as a sign of the undefeatable power of file sharing. Or something.

Currently, with the artist's lawyers keeping mum about the case, there is no information as to why Prince dropped the lawsuit. According to the documents, obtained by the gossip website, it was a lawsuit without prejudice, meaning that Prince hasn’t waived any rights and can re-launch the suit whenever he feels like it. At this time however, a new lawsuit seems unlikely.