London, September 14: Pop star Prince has reportedly decided to wage a legal action on websites that are making unauthorised use of his music.

His move comes in the wake of posting of clips from his recent concert at The O2 Arena in London on the website YouTube.

The clips have appeared on the website despite the fact that fans were banned from taking photographs or video footage during the show.

Now, Prince is launching legal action in a bid to “reclaim his art on the internet”. He is believed to be the first major artist to battle with the online giant.

"These are steps that the ever innovative Prince is taking to reclaim his art on the internet," the Daily Mail quoted a spokesman for the star as saying.

"Prince believes strongly that as an artist the music rights must remain with the artist and thus copyrights should be protected across the board. Very few artists have ever taken this kind of action over their rights. Yet Prince has showed time and time again he is ready to challenge the system in new ways to put artists and music first," he added.

The singer has approached Web Sheriff, a company which specialises in combating online piracy and copyright infringement, to act on his behalf.

"Some artists are very relaxed about the use of their image and music on the internet, some less so. Prince feels very strongly that people should remember his concerts as they were, not as some grainy mobile phone footage," said John Giacobbi, managing director of Web Sheriff.

"The vast majority of artists have little or no control over their rights on the internet, with piracy rampant and very little regulation. Prince's actions are a brave and pioneering step to challenge the status quo and hand control over internet rights back to the artists," he added.

Giacobbi said that the firm had got more than 1,000 unauthorised Prince video clips removed from YouTube in the past few days, which also included videos from the O2 gigs.

"As soon as they are taken down, more spring up the next day. The onus is on the artists as opposed to YouTube itself. There is zero pornography on YouTube because it is filtered out. It would be perfectly feasible for them to filter out unauthorised music material, but they choose not to do this,” he said.

"At the end of the day, if you take copyrighted music and film off YouTube, most of its business would be gone," he added.

The firm has revealed that Prince is also targeting online auction website eBay for selling unauthorised merchandise.

"We are not targeting fans who might want to sell their copy of Purple Rain, we are targeting companies in China manufacturing Prince handbags and selling them in their thousands. There is a distinction to be drawn there," Giacobbi said. (With Inputs from ANI)