This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Legal
Spears Senior orders fan site shutdown
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 30 March 2009
Taking a leaf out of Prince’s book, Jamie ‘father of Britney’ Spears has ordered the closure of one of his daughter’s fan sites on the grounds of copyright infringement.
Spears Senior who, of course, is currently managing his daughter’s affairs as part of the ‘conservatorship’ that was put in place after her loopy period early last year, has told the owner of BreatheHeavy.com that “you are an uber fan who’s gone a little too far”. Spears apparently objects to the posting of unauthorised photos, lyrics and videos on the fan site.
In a message posted on the website, its owner, Jordan Miller, writes: “I have been battling the conservatorship Britney is currently placed under for months now. When I did not conform to the requests and demands Britney’s management and father, Jamie Spears, recently put upon BreatheHeavy to stay quiet, they in turn became angry and malicious, launching, what I feel is an unjust attack, against me and my website. This conservatorship Britney is placed under, which controls every aspect of her life, is now clenching the future of her biggest fansite”.
Miller is asking users of his site to donate money to help him hire lawyers to fight Spears’ infringement claims. As previously reported, Prince last year issues similar orders against some of his fan sites, ordering pictures and lyrics and the like be removed. Such action does seem somewhat counter-productive, even if infringement claims are legitimate, given that fans sites invariably provide tonnes of free publicity for an artist and their commercial exploits. There is also a fear artists might use infringement claims against fan sites which sometimes carry negative coverage about them.
