More and more streamers are being banned on Twitch. The reason is copyright allegations from the music industry. Now, there has been a statement from Twitch regarding this, in which the streaming service admits some serious oversights.
What is the situation? Currently, streamers are being banned due to copyright complaints from the music industry. The reason is usually music playing in the background of the stream for which the streamer does not have rights. Twitch is then contacted by the rights holders and has to deal with bans against the violations.
Several well-known streamers, including Voyboy or Papaplatte, have been banned for such reasons.
To avoid penalties, many streamers have had to delete their entire library of clips. This equates to the destruction of a life’s work. However, even such measures were sometimes not enough, as bans were still issued for already deleted clips.
All these issues have led to great dissatisfaction among streamers, and there is anger towards Twitch, as this tweet summarizes well:
It is insane that Twitch informs partners that they have deleted their content – and that there are more pieces of content that violate the guidelines, even though there is NO identification system to find out what it is. Their solution to the DMCA issue is for creators to delete their life’s work. This is pure gross negligence.
Specifically, many streamers complain that they received only vague emails that did not clarify which clips and music pieces were actually involved. For a long time, they were left in the dark and often did not know why they suddenly received warnings or were even banned.
Now, there has finally been an official statement from Twitch in which the company admits some serious mistakes.
Twitch was taken by surprise
This is what Twitch says: In a lengthy blog post, Twitch explains the situation and admits what they could have done better:
We have heard your feedback about how frustratingly little information we have provided, and we should have made this warning email much more informative and helpful.
In recent months, we have done our best to address this situation on behalf of both the rights holders and the creators. One of the mistakes we made was that we did not develop adequate tools that would allow creators to manage their own VOD and clip libraries. You are rightly upset that the only option we provided was a tool for mass deletion of clips, and that we only notified you three days in advance that you could use this tool.
We could have developed more sophisticated, user-friendly tools quite some time ago. The fact that we did not is our fault; that is on us. And we could have given creators a longer period to adjust their VOD and clip libraries – that too was a failure. We sincerely apologize for these mistakes, and we will do better.
This is supposed to improve: Currently, Twitch is working intensively on methods and opportunities to avoid such situations in the future.
- Finer methods to find and delete clips with copyright content, rather than just simply “delete everything“.
- Control over which audio data from your live stream can ultimately be found in the saved clip.
- Direct insight into the copyright complaint for streamers, including info on what exactly it is about, who is complaining, and why. This way, streamers can justify themselves directly and possibly resolve the situation themselves.
What should streamers do now? Until all these measures are implemented, it will still take a while. Therefore, Twitch currently advises the following measures to avoid further trouble and bans:
- Currently, it is best not to use any music in streams unless you own the rights to it.
- If you want to play music, use services that hold the copyrights, including Soundtrack by Twitch or music libraries such as Soundstripe, Monstercat Gold, Chillhop, Epidemic Sound, and NCS.
How is this received by streamers? Streamers are not happy about the situation and that Twitch seemingly took the problem lightly in the past and still has no tangible solutions months after the first statement on the issue in June. The fact that streamers had to delete their works and are now given the advice “just don’t stream music” annoys many.
User Dry DesertPogona summarizes it well:
I just don’t understand why the site has to almost explode for you to be motivated to communicate with us and to say that you MUST develop tools soon. Lately, I worry less about whether I will still be here in the future, and more about whether Twitch will still be here in the future.
This is also not the first time you have waited for the pot to boil over. You cannot simply ignore, minimize, and sweep these problems under the rug and hope they will go away.
Too much damage has been done for you to simply talk your way out of it.
The current bans due to copyright violations do not only concern music rights. In a particularly bizarre case, it involves the virtual streamer “Project Melody”. She uses a virtual avatar for which she allegedly does not have the rights. Therefore, the alleged creator claims “your body belongs to me!“
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