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RIP Prince, A Legendary Musician With A Complicated Internet History (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: Reflecting on the popular musician's uneasy relationship with the Internet and social media upon the 57-year-old surprising death. In 2010, Prince "famously shuttered his LotusFlow3r.com website," proclaiming that "The Internet is completely over... All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." In 2014, The Guardian ran a story titled "Prince quits the Internet," after the singer deleted his social media accounts. He filed a lawsuit against his fans, which was later dropped, for sharing bootlegged copies of his music online. He even banned fans from taking smartphone photos at his concerts in 2013. Prince did seem to open up to the Internet to some degree in the past couple years. Prince's HTNRUN album was posted on Jay Z's Tidal music site last year. In Silicon Valley, Prince is being remembered as a social innovator and a passionate advocate for Black youth," inspiring YesWeCode, Van Jones' initiative to teach 100,000 low-income kids to write code, and hackathons across the country to expose kids in underserved communities to computer science. Bob Brown from Networkworld writes, "News of Prince's death Thursday briefly crashed the TMZ news site. From there, fans flocked to the Internet and social media to mourn this music star who did his darnedest to stay off the grid." RIP Prince.
Tribute from Bloom County
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
James Brown and Jimi Hendrix all rolled into one
Saw him live many times and it was always a kick ass show
Compared to the shit today, he truly was a musical genius
The record company put restrictions on when and where he could use his stage name of "Prince".
He sidestepped that with the "formerly known as" label.
Prince was not his "stage name". Prince was his REAL NAME. His mother named him that and it was on his birth certificate. He went by that name his entire life. That's why it was such bullshit that his record company tried to claim copyright. It wasn't some silly made-up stage name like Madonna or Jon Stewart. It was his real name.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!