According to The Next Web…

Twitter has been served a DMCA copyright complaint for content that was published using the Vine video platform it acquired and launched earlier this year. …

In this particular case, the takedown request came from NPG Records, the 20-year old record label owned by Prince. ‘NPG’ is short for New Power Generation, the name of the artist’s former backing band.

A representative of NPG Records wrote to Twitter to say eight video clips hosted on Vine contained “unauthorized recordings” and “unauthorized synchronizations” and asked the company to remove them immediately.

The request was sent on March 22, 2013.

The links to the Vine clips were included in the letter and no longer lead to playable videos, so it’s safe to assume Twitter followed up on the NPG representative’s request rather swiftly.

Vine is a quick video sharing platform. As a content producer, you film, upload and share your videos. As a consumer you follow or view videos from friends and others. Kind of a streamlined YouTube platform.

It’s an interesting conundrum. Producing and posting content is so easy. But is it fair if what you’re producing is someone else’s work? Some musicians are Very OK, in fact encouraging of audience members posting content; others, such as Prince, are not. Chilling Effects is a project/website that, with the help of everyone, tracks copyright issues…

Chilling Effects aims to help you understand the protections that the First Amendment and intellectual property laws give to your online activities. We are excited about the new opportunities the Internet offers individuals to express their views, parody politicians, celebrate their favorite movie stars, or criticize businesses. But we’ve noticed that not everyone feels the same way. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users. Chilling Effects encourages respect for intellectual property law, while frowning on its misuse to “chill” legitimate activity.

I’ve written about copyright before, but I always like to take the time to hammer on home again the importance of copyright and education about copyright. The lines between content producers, creators and consumers blur the optic gets trickier! Having someone high profile such as Prince take umbrage with copyright infringement may help smooth the path for emerging artists who want to own their artistic endeavors.