THE ARTIST has asked fans on the internet to help him petition the Warner Brothers label to relinquish the rights to his back catalogue material and hand it over to his Paisley Park empire.
The request comes in the same week as attorneys acting for The Artist threatened fan site webmasters with legal action if they do not remove photos, soundfiles and other Artist copyrighted material from their own sites.
The message, which has been posted on The Artist’s Love4OneAnother website (http://love4oneanother.com/future.htm) under the heading ‘Free The Music’, includes an e-mail form which can be sent to Warners. The form asks – in the phonetic language in common with many of The Artist’s press releases – that Warners revert ownership of the material back to The Artist. The petition states that Warner Brothers has recouped many more times their original investment in the recordings, and should relinquish control of them.
The petition hints that The Artist is likely to release much more material over the internet; his latest album, Crystal Ball, was originally made available through the web. Allegedly, unreleased material will be available through The Artist’s site next year.
Meanwhile, webmasters on fan sites devoted to the star are waiting for the next step in The Artist’s campaign to clamp down on his material being available on the web. With the ultimatum deadline passing on Thursday (March 26), it is expected that the next move by attorney’s acting on The Artist’s instructions will be to issue court summonses to those not complying.