His purple majesty, Prince, who is notorious for controlling his musical image, is now suing 22 fans who he claims have illegally posted his live shows online, making them available for download, the New York Daily News reports.
According to the Daily News, Prince Rogers Nelson filed a lawsuit in Northern District of California earlier this week alleging copyright infringement and is seeking a whopping $1 million from each of the 22 fans.
While only two full identities have been named in the lawsuit—Dan Chodera and Karina Jindrova, 20 online user aliases, many of which are Prince-themed, such as "PurpleHouse2" and "PurpleKissTwo," are also being sued.
"The Defendants in this case engage in massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince's material," the lawsuit states, the Independent reports.
The lawsuit alleges that one person has some 363 illegal links to file-sharing services hosting Prince bootlegs. It also claims the majority of the links were hosted on Facebook fan pages and Google's Blogger network, the Daily News reports.
"Prince has suffered and is continuing to suffer damages in an amount according to proof, but no less than $1 million per Defendant," the suit adds, the Daily News notes.
Court papers viewed by the Independent state stated: "Defendants rely on either Google's Blogger platform or Facebook, or both, to accomplish their unlawful activity."
The report also claims that along with illegal content, set lists were also published on social media.
"Rather than publishing lawful content to their blogs, they typically publish posts that list all the songs performed at a certain Prince live show and then provide a link to a file-sharing service where unauthorized copies of the performance can be downloaded."
Read more at the New York Daily News and the Independent .