During the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, on April 26, Prince covered Radiohead's "Creep". Subsequently, fan-filmed versions of the song, recorded with mobile phones in somewhat poor quality, were uploaded on YouTube. However, Prince is apparently uptight about copyright issues in general and his record label NPG has unleashed cease-and-desist letters on YouTube which took the videos down.

This has upset Radiohead, and frontman Thom Yorke told AP that they are the song's copyright owners and thus they can allow or deny its online dissemination. Furthermore, Yorke apparently was curious to check out Prince's rendition after being informed about the YouTube videos. However, to his dismay, the links he received from friends to Prince's performance at Coachella were down.

"Tell him to unblock it. It's our song," Yorke said.

Prince has a history of over-aggressively protecting his image and work. He was waged legal battles against Google, eBay and Pirate Bay, as well as his own fans for using or enabling the sharing of unlicensed clips of his music or images of him. I guess the next step is asking for money/license each time somebody talks about him.

This is exactly the other way around from Radiohead. These guys understood that old rules don't work anymore and RadioHead announced their name your own price scheme in 2007, offering the digital version of its latest album, In Rainbows, for whatever listeners chose to pay for it, even if it was nothing at all. They also allowed amateur and professional mixers to create their own mash-ups of their single "Nude". In the meantime, the video has popped up back on YouTube: