Prince is lining a flotilla of lawyers to take on the Pirate Bay, in the latest stage of his crusade to stamp out web piracy of his stuff.

The small big star sent his hard core fans reeling last week, when he fired "cease and desist" notices at unofficial fan sites and demanded "details of the means by which you propose to compensate our clients".

Now he is going after much bigger fry, with Cnet reporting (http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9814504-7.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20) that he has taken on copyright enforcers WebSherriff to put the squeeze on torrent indexers PirateBay.

As well as targeting the Swedish founders of Pirate Bay, Web Sherriff will also target companies that advertise on the site, and examine the firm's compliance with Swedish and international tax regulations, Cnet reports.

At the same time, the report says, Prince's people had issued a statement reassuring his legions of fans that he's not suing fans but simply going after "phoney" sites.

This statement was rubbished by Prince Fans United (http://www.princefansunited.com/) (PFU) a site set up to defend fan sites. PFU described the statement as "confusing, libellous and misleading" and said it had been assured by Prince's PR folks that the statement had been sent out in error. ®

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