Web Sheriff first came to the public’s eye last year when Prince employed the Internet investigation outfit to root out infringing clips on YouTube as well as contacting sites thought to be distributing unauthorized materials.

In the case of Bryan Adams, Web Sheriff is contacting European fan site operators thought to be hosting questionable material and links on the same pages dedicated to the Canadian rocker, according to United Kingdom tech tabloid The Register, which also reports that some of the “objectionable” content includes unauthorized photographs and links to BitTorrent sites.

Because Web Sheriff is a private company and does not have any legal enforcement capabilities, the outfit tries to convince Web site operators to see the artist-perceived errors of their ways. For Bryan Adams fan-site operators, this can result in mutual agreements between the artist and webmasters regarding Web site content.

“There is nothing sinister about this at all,” Web Sheriff’s John Giacobbi told The Register. “It’s just that some of the fans [running sites] are guilty of over-exuberance about the artist … They’re doing what fans do and being enthusiastic but they sometimes take things too far by including links to pirate sites and using unofficial material.”