Looking For That Special Prince Video Online? Good Luck With That

 

Prince was a musical genius, but he also didn't much like the Internet. He was notoriously diligent about making sure that there were no posted videos online of his music, even if it was just the background in some video featuring a cute kid. There aren't many options if you want to legally watch his old music videos and performances. But that lack of legal options doesn't stop fans for looking online and scammers have no problems figuring out ways to make money off the scarcity of Prince videos. 

As a quick example, above is the Google results page for the search "Prince Let's Go Crazy Video." The top result is a karaoke video of the tune, and the second result is a YouTube video that is labeled Prince & The Revolution — "Let's Go Crazy" (1984). But it's actually just a lone Prince image accompanied by some odd generic rock tune. Replacing the original music gets around YouTube's copyright content filter and allows the person posting to make Google Adsense money from unwitting visitors looking for the real thing.

In fact, every link on the first couple of pages of the search link to scam web sites, wrongly attributed videos and text pages that include the search phrase but don't actually include the video promised. Then there are the web sites based in China or Japan that seem to include a lot of anime porn, but nothing from the great Purple one.

It's fine to be protective of your music. But at what point does that fear of being pirated cost you money and attention from fans who want to celebrate your talent?