Boycott Sony for the Holidays
According to John O'Regan (a.k.a. Diamond Rings the amazing video that Colin Medley made for "All Yr. Songs" has been pulled from YouTube at the request of Sony BMG due to alleged "Copyright Infringement" neither O'Regan or Medley has a relationship with Sony and there has been no comment from either Sony or YouTube as to what supposed infingement took place (with an original song by O'Regan and an original video by Medley.)
To add insult to injury Medley's YouTube account is apparently “not in good standing” and further “strikes may result in the termination of your account”. The full letter form John O'Regan is on Hypelighter and you should go and read it. It includes the following:"Colin’s numerous videos have helped a great many bands reach far beyond the physical boundaries of the Toronto scene, so for him to potentially lose a means of disseminating his hard work would be a real setback for our entire music community."A sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly. Colin makes amazing, original videos and in addition to the Diamond Rings video, a handful of other music videos, the regular live videos which are sometimes posted on this site, his music blog, his Soundcheck series for the National Post, his Bucky Award for top fan Colin generally spends all of his time and energy promoting amazing bands usually for little more than the love of music. Colin will, whatever happens, always be welcome to post videos here or on our video accounts - we would be honored.
Sony needs to prove copyright infringment (prove that they somehow own the song or the video, I'm not going to accept nitpicking like "it looks sorta like a video we made once" or "you can vaguely make out a picture of something we own in the background".) or, failing to prove they own the song or the video they need to make a formal apology to Colin and John and let YouTube know that there is no copyright infringement and the mistake was entirely theirs.
Until one of these things happens I'm urging readers of this site to boycott completely, all Sony Music, Sony Films and DVDs and Sony Electronics. Sony, one of a handful of companies named in a lawsuit for stealing from their own artists should stop making frivolous copyright claims about things that they do not own and have no stake in.
While we wait for resolution (not buying Sony products in our spare time.)
Pop over to Pitchfork and download All Yr. Songs and watch the video (that Sony likes enough to pretend it's theirs) on Vimeo
Labels: Colin Medley, Copyright, Diamond Rings, Sony
posted by Justin Beach at
6:00 PM
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15 Comments:
What copyrighted work are they being accused of infringing? Doesn't Youtube check these things out before pulling videos?
Apparently not - at least not when it's a major label.
That's so lame. Bullies.
This is ridiculous! I, for one, am outraged
YouTube has an automatic system for checking copyright infringement. It isn't always right. The system basically takes a snippet from a video and compares the audio and video of everything uploaded to YouTube against it. It is possible that the video was pulled because YouTube's robots thought the song was another song owned by Sony. This could be what happened.
Maybe it's because of that blatant flash of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the beginning?
@Mark - I doubt it was automatic, the video has been up for months.
I have a Sony laptop that I would like to throw out the window.
This is complete BS on Sony's part, you've got me in on this boycott. Sony won't get a cent from me!
When's that next Spider-Man movie coming out?
I like how everyone ignores me in favour of anger.
I'm not ignoring you Cal - if you're right, if it's a half second of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles view-master slide and that caused them to have the video pulled and Colin's account jeopardized - it changes nothing. Sony should publicly apologize and ask YouTube to fully reinstate Colin's account.
My guess would be it is the Ninja Turtles thing, which may technically give them some rights, but in the church of public opinion this is a really clumsy thing to do. It's a scorched-earth policy, and if they go after every 2 second shot of anything they own any part of, they're going to generate a lot of negative feelings for very weak reasons.
They also could have contacted Colin directly, told him what they had a problem with and he could have done a re-edit. I think that's in the works anyway, but it's difficult right now as neither Sony nor YouTube have told them what exactly they have a problem with.
I did a review of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" last night in Smithers. I could have put parts of it on Youtube BUT..the producer/actor in the piece did NOT have permission to use the book photos that were used as part of the multi media theatrical piece..so I aquiesced on principle and just posted photos of the event with the article. Ya can't be none too careful with regards to exploiting someone else's work! Here is my review of the evening for those interested..it had some great accordion & Cello music that unfortunately I couldn't post because it was being played while I took vids of the media presentation! Grrrr
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/4779124-a-childs-christmas-in-smithers
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