November 6, 2007

Prince Declares Images of Prince Off-Limits

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


mojo-photo-noimage.JPG

Lawyers for Prince have ordered several of the superstar’s biggest fan sites to remove any image that bears his likeness prompting fans to form a group to fight the demands. Three websites: housequake.com, princefams.com and prince.org have come together to form ‘Prince Fans United’ in response to the situation, which even sees demands to remove images of fans own tattoos. – NME

Bruce Springsteen has instructed his legal team to track down all web sites which feature his ass and have them eliminated, the Riff has learned. The New Jersey star’s rear, clad in worn denim, bulged proudly on the cover of the 1984 album Born in the U.S.A., and lawyers believe any internet representation of the cheeks’ signature curves could constitute an income loss, as fans ogle the booty for free instead of purchasing the album. The Boss has enlisted a squadron of buttock investigators to identify his own personal posterior amongst what experts say must be “as many as 30” other backsides pictured on the internet. No bloggers were available for a rebuttal.

Chicago rappers Cool Kids have demanded all pictures of cool kids be removed from all websites, despite the fact that the members of the band themselves are not kids, and only cool in a kind of ironic sense. “We saw some pictures of like a couple actual cool kids on the news, and we had the feeling maybe the news guys were making fun of us, since that’s the name of our band,” said Cool Kid Mikey Rocks, wearing a fluorescent pink baseball cap. When asked if they were trying to be funny or ironic or artsy with their request, he replied, “I don’t even know any more,” while making air quotes with his fingers.

In a related story, obscure 80s combo The The have demanded all instances of the article which they doubled to form the name of their band be excised from the internet, starting at the end of the sentence you are reading on the Riff right now. “There’s tons of other determiners around for people to use that don’t interfere with our clients’ ability to control their own image,” said a spokesperson, “like ‘a,’ or even ‘an,’ and in many circumstances, ‘da.'” Da spokesperson then ran out of da room, so nobody could take his picture.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate