Twitch Mass banning tons of Twitch streamers for playing music on stream

Jest said:

Yes, they do. Just as Youtube must delete the channels of DMCA violators. Otherwise they risk becoming liable. DMCA is essentially an agreement made based on Rights Holders understanding that the nature of sites like Youtube and Twitch means that those Service Providers can not pre-emptively prevent copyright violations so rather than immediately going to court over them, the Rights Holders allow the Service Providers some room to remove the violating content. If this *only* applied to VODs and not the users then it's effectively useless to Rights Holders as users would simply re-upload after removal. Or in the case of Twitch, the VODs are miniscule as the service is focused on live broadcast. So that means the users themselves need to removed. Too many DMCA requests against a single user can and would be used in court as evidence that the Service Provider is not doing an adequate job of removing violating material and could result in the Service Provider becoming liable.

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DMCA is not an agreement, it is a law explaining what content is legal and what content is not. The law doesn't mention banning or deletion of content, it doesn't talk about consequences to breaking the law.

All that is required by law is removing the violating content, not banning. Twitch made the choice to suddenly ban everyone with no warning, their choice to ban people has zero to do with the DMCA.

Your example of multiple requests on a single user isn't part of this conversation, because Twitch banned *EVERYONE*, not people who had been warned and ignored the warning.

BreezyLimbo said:

so uh

Did you go report your teachers to Disney because they would play Remember the Titans constantly on rainy days?

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Was the teacher taking money from the kids for showing them the movie in class?

Stop with the lousy analogies.

chezzymann said:

What if there's music in the game? Like GTA?

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There is a good reason why some streamers/youtubers will mute music from certain games, such as GTA. It's very common when the game itself is licensing music from third parties, they are allowed to use that music just for the game, so they will go after people playing them through the game in videos.

Jest said:

I mean the way the law stands, if you buy a PPV and invite a ton of people over to watch it, you would technically be liable for copyright violation. It just doesn't tend to be acted on because it's not worth it for the Rights Holders. Those Rights Holders *have* gone after people and websites that do exactly that over streams though.

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And beyond that, there are and should be plenty of exceptions for small situations like this. The gray area we live in isn't ideal since you're not perfectly protected, but it is pretty good. People are acting like this is giant copyright holders going after small individuals and small exceptions. These are giant companies going after probably the largest broadcaster of live, unlicensed copyrighted material on the Internet, Twitch. Even the individual channels may be broadcasting to hundreds or thousands of viewers, definitely not small scale by any standard. It's certainly well over the threshold where a small business would have to start worrying about being pursued for litigation, especially if they were an entertainment venue where people visit with the main purpose of enjoying themselves.

Fair, it has been in the twitch ToS for a while now, surprised it took that long. Some streams are gonna get real boring without music, a bunch of streamers depend on music because they just don't have conversation to keep their content enjoyable.

Netherscourge said:

Was the teacher taking money from the kids for showing them the movie in class?

Stop with the lousy analogies.

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uhm

the analogy I was responding to was this:

Profit is not the factor. If you take your projector and blu ray player out to a public park and play Transformers 5 on the side of a giant building 100% for free, you'd still be violating copyright for Transformers 5, as broadcast is prohibited without expressed written permission from the rights holder.

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now, if reading isn't a strong suit, you can ask. But teachers technically do violate copyright law by showing movies to their class, period.

Welp no more fun allowed. Main thing people liked about my stream was the music.

The Adder said:

1. I know you've worked yourself into a comfortable froth, but you might want to read my post before responding to it in regards to their requesting that I stop. Yeah. No fucking duh. It's their shit. And I have some god damned sense of propriety.

2. I mean they could choose to go straight to attempting a lawsuit instead of the more fiscally responsible CnD, bbutit's not a criminal infringement and taking me to court would cost them more than they could actually demand of me even if I didn't fight it at all. Moreover, given my edit of my avatar for Pride Month, I'd have some basis for an affirmative defense of fair use as a transformative work. Which would open them up to legal reprecussions.

3. Finally, it's a stupid fucking analogy because using an avatar that depicts a copyrighted character is not the equivalent of playing the entirety of a copyrighted work then bitching and moaning when the people who own it don't want you to.

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1. I've read your post entirely. Just because you say you'll stop when they request, does not mean you're stopping now despite knowing it's illegal. It's the same defense that streamers used, "We assume it's OK until they tell us otherwise."

2. It doesn't matter how much it costs them. They could take you to court and use you as an example, as the RIAA has many times in the past. You need to look up the history of the RIAA and copyright lawsuits. Also while you MAY have a basis for 'fair use', that doesn't change the fact that the companies can and would bankrupt you before it even gets to that point.

3. It's the exact same. You've made an incredibly stupid mistake in assuming that somehow copyright law cares about the length or duration of the violation. Jim Sterling has had issues with Nintendo due to seconds of footage from their games during his videos, and videos have been shut down for including even small snippets of songs. You're still violating copyright, you're still violating the law and they could take you to court. Full stop.

BreezyLimbo said:

But teachers technically do violate copyright law by showing movies to their class, period.

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Isn't rebroadcasting by an educational institution for educational purposes covered under fair use?

The educational fair use guidelines apply to material used in educational institutions and for educational purposes. Examples of "educational institutions" include K-12 schools, colleges, and universities. Libraries, museums, hospitals, and other nonprofit institutions also are considered educational institutions under most educational fair use guidelines when they engage in nonprofit instructional, research, or scholarly activities for educational purposes.

"Educational purposes" are:

• noncommercial instruction or curriculum-based teaching by educators to students at nonprofit educational institutions
• planned noncommercial study or investigation directed toward making a contribution to a field of knowledge, or
• presentation of research findings at noncommercial peer conferences, workshops, or seminars.

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Wow, it really sucks how they just started banning people for this.

Understandable, but it still sucks when streamers are watching something like E3 conferences and a publisher uses a licensed song somewhere in the show.

TheLegendOfMart said:

Same could be said about games. They don't have permission to play games on stream.

They should just stop streaming...

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Actually, the games quite often sponsor the streamers.

Syriel said:

Completely agree. As a business transaction, there would likely be a sliding fee scale (though TBH high volume usually ends up with a lower per item rate). I could also see something where the smallest of the small streamers are covered because they aren't generating enough of a cost to matter. Or maybe Amazon adds it as a Prime benefit, aka if you're Prime member with less than 1000 subs, you can use pre-cleared music for free.

There are lots of options for Amazon/Twitch. The tech is there to make it work. Someone just needs to identify the business case.

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Yeah, it's definitely the streamer side of things that complicates it; if it was just Twitch paying directly this probably would have been sorted out already. Twitch would probably need to offer some kind of simple real-time analytics for streamers so they could immediately appraise the probable cost of a licensed usage based on their current view count. Or maybe you just say that streamers need to accept the associated risk and avoid licensed music if they're worried about the fees being too difficult to reliably estimate. And you probably still need some kind of protections against trolling or sudden viewer spikes, as I could see community driven trolling efforts and view-bots as a pretty simple way to try to maliciously run up the tab on lower-view count streamers.

Perhaps some kind of weighting based on the streamer's most recent historical view count averages might be one way to try to smooth things out. Although honestly I know very little about Twitch metrics so I have no clue if streamers have hugely variable or fairly predictable numbers, both for viewers and subscriptions. The more I think about it, the more fascinating it seems. I'd love to read a deep dive on some Twitch metrics related to this kind of business analysis.

BreezyLimbo said:

But teachers technically do violate copyright law by showing movies to their class, period.

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Do I need a license to show a movie for educational purposes? This activity is covered under the "Face-to-Face Teaching Exemption," right?
It depends. Under the "Face-to-Face Teaching Exemption," copyrighted movies may be shown in a K-12 school setting without copyright permission only if all criteria are met:

• A teacher or instructor is present, engaged in face-to-face teaching activities.
• The institution must be an accredited, nonprofit educational institution.
• The showing takes place in a classroom setting with only enrolled students in attendance.
• The movie is used as an essential part of the core, required curriculum being taught. (The instructor should be able to show how the use of the motion picture contributes to the overall required course study and syllabus.)
• The movie being used is a legitimate copy, not recorded from a legitimate copy or recorded from TV.

This means the "Face-to-Face Teaching Exemption" does not apply outside the nonprofit, in-person, classroom teaching environment. It doesn't apply to movies shown online – even if they're part of course-related activities and websites. It also doesn't apply to interactions that are not in-person - even simultaneous distance learning interactions. It doesn't apply at for-profit educational institutions.

For specific requirements, please reference The Copyright Act of 1976, Public Law No. 94-553, 90 stat 2541: Title 17; Section 110(i), or consult your copyright attorney.


^Not that this has anything to do with Twitch streamers playing copyrighted music in the background while they take in sub money, but I figured I'd post it since it was floating around. Also - apologies. I didn't see the full original post you replied to, just a tiny excerpt quote with no additional context.

Just mute the VODs where the copyrighted material is. This is way overkill.

nasirum said:

Just mute the VODs where the copyrighted material is. This is way overkill.

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Isn't that what they used to do?

Kadey said:

Welp no more fun allowed. Main thing people liked about my stream was the music.

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Your stream must be trash if other people's work is the best part of it.

The internet is fundamentally incompatible with copyright law

Dreamwriter said:

DMCA is not an agreement, it is a law explaining what content is legal and what content is not. The law doesn't mention banning or deletion of content, it doesn't talk about consequences to breaking the law.

All that is required by law is removing the violating content, not banning. Twitch made the choice to suddenly ban everyone with no warning, their choice to ban people has zero to do with the DMCA.

Your example of multiple requests on a single user isn't part of this conversation, because Twitch banned *EVERYONE*, not people who had been warned and ignored the warning.

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Yes, let's now focus on my use of simple terms instead of technical ones as if that means I don't know what I'm talking about or that it's inaccurate. I wonder what a lawyer whose focus is IP and Copyright Law would say about Safe Harbor:

Safe Harbor is the clause in the DMCA that allows service providers to protect themselves from their users uploading content that is infringing the rights of a copyright holder. One of the conditions of DMCA Safe Harbor is that the service provider MUST immediately remove content when they receive a DMCA claim.

If the service provider does NOT immediately remove content when they receive a DMCA claim, they can lose their Safe Harbor protection. At this point, the service provider would be liable for ALL infringing content on their site.

So… if Twitch receives a DMCA for music in a stream, and they do not immediately remove the infringing content, Twitch will lose their Safe Harbor protection and can now be held liable for ALL infringing content on Twitch.

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Source: https://medium.com/pretzelrocks/lets-take-a-minute-to-talk-about-the-dmca-cd14596a329d


Now let's see how Twitch chooses to enforce DMCA in order to protect themselves.

PSA: People that are messaging me asking if playing music is okay. No, if you don't own it, don't play it. You risk being DMCA'ed. NOT NEW.

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It's a three strike system. 24 hour suspension / 24 hour suspension / Permanent suspension. Content is removed each time.

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Notice those tweets are from the Partnerships Account Manager at Twitch and are from nearly two years ago.

And Twitch's officially posted DMCA Guidelines:

Notification of Infringement
It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In addition, we will promptly terminate without notice the accounts of those determined by us to be "repeat infringers".

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Source: https://www.twitch.tv/p/legal/dmca-guidelines/

So Twitch just happens to operate on nearly the same exact standards for DMCA that Youtube does. Must be purely coincidence and have absolutely no legal justification at all despite the fact that banning users actively works against Twitch's direct ability to make money. The only significant difference between Twitch and Youtube's decision is that Twitch opts for a 24 hr Temp Ban on the first two strikes.

Rael said:

I'm not saying they don't have the rights to do this I'm just saying that they're not making any money from the music.

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That's not going to fly in any court.

The Kree said:

Your stream must be trash if other people's work is the best part of it.

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Dude. There is no need to be an ass about it.

Tempy said:

That's not going to fly in any court.

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Do I look like a lawyer? Is this a court?

Coyote Starrk said:

Dude. There is no need to be an ass about it.

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I'm not looking for advice on how to be inoffensive towards shitty content streamers. Thanks though.

B-Dubs said:

It's not just paying the .99 cents for the song, there's a different licence you need to have in order to use it in a way to make money off it. I guarantee the last Thor movie spent way more than a buck to get the right to play the Immigrant Song in the film. Heck, when Conan was getting pulled from the Tonight Show one of his last episodes had him playing a Beatles song in the background of a bit and they couldn't put the clip on the web because getting the rights for more than just that single moment were too expensive.

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Speaking of Conan and copyright issues. This topic specifically reminded me about this segment of his show:

Music industry again being backwards. The benefits of this for them are right before their eyes: twitch streaming of games actually helps their sales, despite initial worries from publishers. Same goes for music. Usually the streamer displays the name of the artist and song, audience gets exposed to the music, wants to be cool like their favorite streamer, gets into that music, buys it.

IDreamOfHime said:

Understandable, but it still sucks when streamers are watching something like E3 conferences and a publisher uses a licensed song somewhere in the show.

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Even games have licensed music, how can this automatic system figure out is licensed song part of game or not? And some games are all about licensed music, like Just Dance.
It's a bad system imo.

The Kree said:

Your stream must be trash if other people's work is the best part of it.

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How nice of you. /s

PeskyToaster said:

i like to find streams of TV broadcasts like the NBA Finals. Laws are nothing.

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You monster.

I can't tell you how often I've listened to a stream and enjoyed a song, looked it up, and then bought it. What a short sighted opportunity the music industry just shat on.

ZeroDotFlow said:

1. I've read your post entirely. Just because you say you'll stop when they request, does not mean you're stopping now despite knowing it's illegal. It's the same defense that streamers used, "We assume it's OK until they tell us otherwise."

2. It doesn't matter how much it costs them. They could take you to court and use you as an example, as the RIAA has many times in the past. You need to look up the history of the RIAA and copyright lawsuits. Also while you MAY have a basis for 'fair use', that doesn't change the fact that the companies can and would bankrupt you before it even gets to that point.

3. It's the exact same. You've made an incredibly stupid mistake in assuming that somehow copyright law cares about the length or duration of the violation. Jim Sterling has had issues with Nintendo due to seconds of footage from their games during his videos, and videos have been shut down for including even small snippets of songs. You're still violating copyright, you're still violating the law and they could take you to court. Full stop.

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Fucking lord

1. Not only are those rules not new, so the fuck are they surprised about, but you seem to be misconstruing my post as being about them, instead of being about people like yourself throwing a bitch fit about other folks 'defending corporations' when they point out that shit isn't theirs.

2. I wouldn't be running afoul of the RIAA, now would I? You should look up the copyright lawsuit history of Warner Bros.

3. You should really do your reasearch before getting up on your soap box. Youtube copyright claims, which is what Jim has to deal with from Nintendo, has nothing to do with a company acting on copyright law. It's an automated process calibrated by Youtube. Because yes, copyright law does care about the amount of something you are using. That's why a claim isn't a DMCA strike.

Still waiting for them to want to charge me if I have someone else in the car while I have music going. You know they want to.

Not really Twitch's fault; kind of a shame in many scenarios though.

The Kree said:

I'm not looking for advice on how to be inoffensive towards shitty content streamers. Thanks though.

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You don't know anything about his content. You just took the fact that he said people liked the music in his stream to mean that its "trash" and then insulted him based on that assumption.


Thats not needed.

filkry said:

Isn't rebroadcasting by an educational institution for educational purposes covered under fair use?

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alot of the movies they show aren't for educational purposes(Like Rememember the Titans, for example)

Rael said:

No one's watching any streamer to listen to the music.

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Doesn't matter they're making money and every other medium has to pay.

B-Dubs said:

You can do a lesson based on that movie.

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sure, but the argument will then become 'was the movie created to be part of education curriculum'? Or else I can just show the matrix all day and you know, 'bend' the rules as long as I make it part of the lesson

Netherscourge said:

I'm so sick of people ignoring other people's artistic or intellectual property rights.

Streamers make money playing other company's games and other people's music. That's fine - IF YOU GET PERMISSION TO DO SO.

---If you do it without permission, and they don't care, so be it.

---If you do it without permission, and they do care, you take it down or you get banned.

They are not in the wrong for asking you to take it down. You are in the wrong for ignoring their rights.

It's as simple as that.

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I'm curious on this line of thinking.

Do you feel a neighborhood Street Fighter tournament needs permission from Capcom?

Do you feel a family reunion needs permission to play music?

Do I need Atlus' permission to play Persona 5 if I invite a couple friends over?

Streamers don't automatically make money from streaming, and they don't automatically have access to tens of thousands of viewers. I don't feel it's fair to hold small streamers to the same standards as a broadcast corporation. Yes, if someone is pulling in tens of thousands of viewers every day and is making hundreds of thousands of dollars off streaming, they absolutely should be held to higher standards.. I just don't feel that a blanket set of rules is applicable when you have more people that are doing it only as a hobby or for fun and for a small group of friends. Not to mention, there isn't even an avenue to seek permission for a regular person if you wanted to.

Do I need Atlus' permission to play Persona 5 if I invite a couple friends over?

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I forgot about Atlus and their P5 streaming rules. That was stupid of them.

Streaming a game is okay.

Streaming music is bad.

Hmmmmmmm...

filkry said:

Just because it is heavily leveraged by large corporations, doesn't mean it doesn't protect small artists. Without it, I could start a Twitch channel that does nothing but stream small artists' music and make money off of subs and donations.

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Has a Twitch channel ever done that and been successful? If it that simple then why would people pay for your service rather than listen to something like Spotify? Also I'm not saying it doesn't protect small artists, I'm saying that the vast majority of it doesn't and that small artists would probably fair better from the free advertising they'd get on Twitch.

And again, taking money/profit away doesn't matter. What matters is permission from the rights holder. You could pay me $10 in the mail for every time you played a shitty song I never made a dime off of but it's still illegal because the creator controls the broadcast of their material.

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I was asking why it's illegal, I obviously know that it is by responding to the person asking if people could play music freely in shops. Laws that exist to further the profit margins of corporations rather than protecting them from harm are ridiculous.

Maybe copyright law needs more exceptions, certainly copyrights need to expire sooner, but making the claim that it doesn't protect small creators at all is an exaggeration. As a random example, the creator of Overgrowth got a bootleg version of Lugaru 2 taken down from the app store by issuing a copyright claim.

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I said exists as it does hoping to infer the way that it's set up it's mostly for companies rather than artists not that it doesn't help artists at all. If that wasn't clear it's my fault for the poor wording.

Did it really take this long for an event like this to happen? Bizarre

Valiant said:

Streaming a game is okay.

Streaming music is bad.

Hmmmmmmm...

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Different decisions by different people.

The Adder said:

Fucking lord

1. Not only are those rules not new, so the fuck are they surprised about, but you seem to be misconstruing my post as being about them, instead of being about people like yourself throwing a bitch fit about other folks 'defending corporations' when they point out that shit isn't theirs.

2. I wouldn't be running afoul of the RIAA, now would I? You should look up the copyright lawsuit history of Warner Bros.

3. You should really do your reasearch before getting up on your soap box. Youtube copyright claims, which is what Jim has to deal with from Nintendo, has nothing to do with a company acting on copyright law. It's an automated process calibrated by Youtube. Because yes, copyright law does care about the amount of something you are using. That's why a claim isn't a DMCA strike.

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It's especially ironic that you're calling me out like this. Considering I'm just pointing out that your avatar isn't yours and that you're in violation of copyright. That shit ain't yours.

And I brought up the RIAA as an example of how draconian copyright is. It doesn't take much for companies to flip or target anyone in court over perceived copyright infringements, like how when they claimed a TV show hero was too similar to superman and therefore violated their IP, or like what happened with Captain Marvel.

And no, the claim isn't DMCA but it is still an example of a company acting on copyright law. They could in fact bring DMCA strikes against him if they chose. The overbearing power of the DMCA should be widely known by now.

So legit question for Era, should threads about Twitch itself go into the Gaming side as a rule of thumb or the Off Topic side as a rule of thumb. I personally don't mind either way but I wonder what is more preferred.

ManaByte said:

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If I'm reading this correctly, all streamers really need to do is make sure the song name and artist are listed in their overlay or mention the music source in their info section.

What's the problem?

Spirit of Jazz said:

Has a Twitch channel ever done that and been successful? If it that simple then why would people pay for your service rather than listen to something like Spotify? Also I'm not saying it doesn't protect small artists, I'm saying that the vast majority of it doesn't and that small artists would probably fair better from the free advertising they'd get on Twitch.

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Monstercat does that but they also allow people to use their music and of course they own the label that releases said music too.

People should just follow Giant Bomb and do Royalty Free stuff like L O C K D O W N :

Baji Boxer said:

Different decisions by different people.

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Exactly.

And people should be able to call them out for being sticks in the mud.