Sony Apologizes to Diamond Rings After YouTube Video Removal Mishap

After his homemade video for 'All Yr Songs' was removed from YouTube by request of Sony/BMG, Toronto electro-pop act Diamond Rings (John O'Regan, also of D'Urbervilles) was "upset," to say the least -- mainly because he never gave consent.

"They just took it down. Apparently, it was a 'copyright infringement,'" he tells Spinner. "I went back and watched it again and again [but] couldn't find anything that would warrant that kind of attention."

On Dec. 9, O'Regan and his roommate/director Colin Medley received a generic YouTube notification informing them the video had been taken down: "We technically weren't even contacted by [Sony]," he says.

They filed a counter claim, sent out a press release and waited for an explanation. O'Regan also took to his blog to vent and publicly chronicle the saga. Answers came a few days later...


O'Regan says Sony's Canadian branch saw the story in the NOW Toronto blog and the whole debacle turned out to be the result of an automated scanning program used by the major label's UK offices that took offense to O'Regan's 'Diamond Rings' moniker, which is also the title of a single by Sony-signed rapper Chipmunk. It reported the match to YouTube, who removed the video without protest.

"I gather they're a little lax in the ground-checking," says O'Regan. "To them, it was proof enough and red flags went up before anyone looked into whether we'd actually infringed on anything."

Shortly after their video was re-posted on the weekend, Medley, O'Regan and his manager Remi Arora each received personal phone calls from Sony reps who "apologized profusely for the whole mishap," he says. "It was nice to hear. Nothing got too weird on the legal end of things."

The label even promised to deliver the Beyoncé spoils and limited-edition Modest Mouse records that O'Regan facetiously requested as compensation for his and Medley's troubles. "They tell me they're in the mail," he laughs.

Though "everything worked out fine," O'Regan says he's still "disconcerted [by] the idea that you work so hard on something and it can be taken away in an instance like that. Regardless of how nice they were after the fact, it shows that [those] with the money can have their way to some extent. YouTube wouldn't want to take our side in that kind of battle."

He credits fans with playing a major role in conflict resolution. "Fortunately, our friends in the music community brought a lot of attention onto what was going on, which didn't look good on the company," he says. "If they hadn't, I'm sure we would have been buried under paperwork for weeks."

'All Yr Songs' was released as a limited-edition single and video last August, under O'Regan's boutique label Hype Lighter, and fans can expect new material from Diamond Rings in 2010 -- the Halloween-themed single 'Wait and See' with Gentleman Reg on back-up vocals and a b-side cover of Sebadoh's 'On Fire'.

But it won't mimic the original, O'Regan warns: "It sounds like a dance club."