Twitch is a popular video live streaming service from the U.S. that focuses on video game live streaming, music broadcasts, creative content, and others.
The service that has been around since June 2011, was acquired by Amazon.com, Inc. in 2014. A year later, its user base increased by more than 50 million to have more than 100 million viewers per month.
As the largest live-streaming video service for video games, its tens of thousands of partner channels and streamers populate the platform at an immense pace. And within their content, there can be copyrighted materials.
And using those materials without permission can lead to DMCA notices (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
Twitch is no stranger to this.
But after receiving more than 1,000 notices at one point for different individuals, Twitch had to say something about this.
And this is why it notified its streamers, to put the burden on creators.
the RIAA will go after Twitch streamers and YouTubers for 2 seconds of copyright music in a 2 hour video but not go hard on the streaming services like Spotify that are paying pennies to the actual musicians. seems like a real good source of resources
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) May 28, 2021
And in this case, Twitch said that most of the notices are about unauthorized background music.
“All of the claims are for VODs,” wrrote Twitch, “and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming.”
"While the vast majority of you don’t include unauthorized background music in your livestreams." the email reads, adding that "this recent batch suggests that some of you still do. The only way to protect yourself from DMCA notifications is to not stream music – or other copyrighted material – you do not have rights to."
“We are actively speaking with music labels about solutions that could work for creators as well as rights holders.”
Online platforms that have user-generated content have made it easier to issue DMCA notices. For this reason, it's not at all surprising for platforms like Twitch to see a whole batch of DMCA takedown notices.
While live videos don't get taken down immediately, VODs appear to be more vulnerable to these notices.
Before Twitch can come up with a solution with music labels, Twitch asks creators to "unpublish all" of their VODs if they suspect they’ve committed copyright violations.
“For your remaining VODs, we recommend you use the 'unpublish all' feature and review any content for unauthorized music or other copyrighted material."
It should be noted though, that DMCA takedown notices are often abused.
Since the introduction of DMCA, copyright owners have enjoyed full DMCA protection and various tools that enable them to fight copyright infringement.
However, since the rules are brought by the copyright laws, which favor copyright owners, like music labels among others, instead of individual creators, DMCA makes content creators vulnerable to DMCA abuse.
Many of them are left with no proper means to fight against it.
Streamers on Twitch believe that Twitch doesn’t do enough to address this.
