Less than two weeks ago, Prince filed a lawsuit accusing 22 people who engaged in “massive infringement and bootlegging of Prince’s material," by linking to “unauthorized copies of the performance" for download.

However, Prince and his attorneys decided to suddenly drop the case entirely without prejudice (PDF) on Tuesday.


On Wednesday, TMZ quoted Prince's attorneys as saying: "Because of the recent pressure, the bootleggers have now taken down the illegal downloads and are no longer engaging in piracy. We recognize the fans craving for as much material as possible, but we’d prefer they get it from us directly than from third parties who are scalpers rather than real fans of our work."
In the past, Prince had taken a hard line against unauthorized recordings and even against fan sites. His label, Universal Music, also famously filed a takedown of a Prince song being played over a baby video on YouTube, which resulted in the Electronic Frontier Foundation filing a lawsuit against Universal in 2012.