The streaming platform Twitch is facing copyright claims. These concern clips from the years 2017, 2018, and 2019. Twitch is issuing warnings and recommends streamers to delete them. This is causing panic.
This is the trigger: As Twitch’s support writes, they were faced with a “sudden surge of copyright complaints”. Some music rights holders seem to be specifically asking Twitch to take down clips featuring songs they own the rights to. This concerns old Twitch clips that use copyrighted background music.
Twitch advises: Anyone who is unsure if they have such clips should remove them just to be safe. They know it is annoying and are working to improve the situation.
This is the first time something like this has happened, and Twitch understands how stressful this is for streamers.
Streamers fear for their existence, delete clips
How dangerous this is in practice: In practice, “copyright strikes” are existentially threatening for streamers. Anyone who receives 3 warnings within a certain time will have their channel deleted, that is, permanently banned. Their Twitch channels are linked to the income and existence of streamers. They have built these channels over many years.
As streamer Fusilie writes: She received 2 copyright strikes for clips that are over a year old. If Twitch finds another clip of hers and issues a warning for it, she would be permanently banned from Twitch.
She says she feels helpless and is ready to delete all clips out of fear that there might still be one with a copyrighted song. This pains her, as there are many memories attached to the clips, but the loss of her channel would be even harder.
The practical problem, however, is: She has over 100,000 clips, and it is impossible to delete them all at once.
The well-known Fortnite and shooter streamer Cloakzy says how crazy this is. He received a copyright strike; two more and he would be permanently banned.
The work of 5 years could be gone in 2 seconds.
This is how streamers assess the situation: As Destiny streamer GladdX (featured image) explains, he has no idea how Twitch even envisions this. People have huge amounts of clips. There are memories attached to them. Everything is now being deleted panically just to avoid strikes.
He is very dissatisfied with Twitch and the situation. (via twitter)
The well-known LoL streamer Nightblue wonders which music publisher is issuing strikes here. Twitch clips don’t generate money; nobody would watch Twitch clips to hear a specific song.
The background music would merely contribute to others discovering the songs (via twitter).
What could be behind this? As a Twitter user explains, the corona situation could play a role here. Due to this, Twitch has been more in focus than ever before. Music labels could be sensing financial opportunities. Twitch has to comply with every complaint.
For the affected streamers, this is a serious situation.
How serious such copyright strikes are was experienced in November 2019 by YouTuber ApoRed. His YouTube channel was deleted; the company Epic issued copyright strikes against him because he apparently showed things in Fortnite that did not please the game developers.
Although ApoRed is loudly complaining, at that time one of the biggest German channels for Fortnite was deleted.
