Twitch Warns Streamers Another Wave of Copyright Strikes is Coming (theverge.com) 63
Twitch has received a "batch" of new takedown notices from music publishers over copyrighted songs in recorded streams (known as VODs), the company said in an email to streamers today. From a report: The notice may be worrying for some streamers who were affected by the waves of takedowns that hit last year, because if a user gets three copyright strikes on their channel, they will be permanently banned from the platform, according to Twitch's policies. With this advance warning, it seems Twitch is trying to get ahead of a sudden flurry of takedowns and give streamers some time to remove potentially offending VODs.
"We recently received a batch of DMCA takedown notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers," Twitch said in an email Friday, which was sent to a Verge staffer. "All of the claims are for VODs, and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming." [...] In Friday's email, Twitch noted that the only way to avoid DMCA (or Digital Millennium Copyright Act) strikes is to not stream copyrighted material in the first place, and said that if a streamer does have unauthorized content in their VODs or clips, "we strongly recommend that you permanently delete anything that contains that material."
"We recently received a batch of DMCA takedown notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers," Twitch said in an email Friday, which was sent to a Verge staffer. "All of the claims are for VODs, and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming." [...] In Friday's email, Twitch noted that the only way to avoid DMCA (or Digital Millennium Copyright Act) strikes is to not stream copyrighted material in the first place, and said that if a streamer does have unauthorized content in their VODs or clips, "we strongly recommend that you permanently delete anything that contains that material."
3-strikes works in baseball, why digital content? (Score:5, Insightful)
The DMCA simply requires that there is a punishment/removal process for neutral carriers, it doesn't prescribe any of the details. Why not set this to something more lenient? Is there a 3 strikes and you're out rule for the lawyers claiming ownership getting reports wrong?
Twitch has been running from their lax handling of notices in the past, and it's largely rumored that they bowed the knee to the "content owners" as a concession for that violation. The producers on twitch deserve to know the terms of this agreement, or at least how it will impact them before it threatens their livelihood.
should need an full trial to get an (Score:4, Insightful)
should need an full trial to get an strike.
Under the three-strikes laws you got your full court rights.
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Yeah, DMCA is one of the few laws which has punishments prescribed for mere allegations. A law which requires corporate entities to punish innocent persons at the request of copyright trolls seems laughable, yet afaik this mechanism which obviously bypasses 6th amendment rights hasn't been challenged.
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Is having your content taken down from someone else's server(s) a "punishment" under our legal system? If so, where does that leave social media companies that regularly take down peoples' content?
The DMCA requires a take-down mechanism, but the target of the take-down can file a DMCA counter notice to have the content restored. At that point, the DMCA steps out of the picture, with regard to that alleged infringement, and normal copyright law takes over.
The DMCA also requires companies to have, inform us
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The DMCA also requires companies to have, inform users of, and "reasonably implement" a policy on removing repeat infringers -- but the law does not define what a "repeat infringer" is. Blame over-broad definitions on the content-hosting companies, along with any policies that do not allow restoration (after a DMCA counter notice) of allegedly infringing content.
I blame Baseball. If Abner Doubleday would've said 8 strikes and you're out, think of much more we could all be getting away with!
RIAA trying to roll back fair use again (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA really doesn't like the fair use provisions. I'm pretty sure some music casually playing in the background would get laughed out of court in most jurisdictions.
Twitch noted that the only way to avoid DMCA (or Digital Millennium Copyright Act) strikes is to not stream copyrighted material in the first place
Twitch can roll over for the RIAA, fair enough, but they don't get to decide what is or isn't copyrighted, what is or isn't fair use, or what is or isn't infringing. The DMCA is being used a weapon, yet again. The three strikes rule is them trying to add unlegislated weight to the claims. Twitch isn't making any friends over this.
Re:RIAA trying to roll back fair use again (Score:5, Insightful)
Playing a ten or twenty second clip of music is one thing. Playing the entire song, unedited, is another.
And our first RIAA shill. Welcome to the conversation.
So, thank-you for the comment. I can imagine your're shocked....SHOCKED that someone would have the temerity to play a whole song! My God! The humanity! However, the actual legal test isn't the percentage of the song that is duplicated (though that has been used as one metric - more on that below). The actual legal test is, how transformative is the work. A song happening to be played in the background when the actual focus is something else entirely, especially when speaking, game playing, sound effects, etc etc are the primary focus of the end work, that would likely be ruled fair use. In that case, the collective work may have incorporated copyrighted material from other people (and very little that is ever recorded in this world any more doesn't) but unless the music in question is a significant part of the final piece, it's not infringing. Copyright ownership does not give you dictatorial rights to say where and when any copyrighted piece can be used.
Where clip length comes into play, and when it is a major factor in a court decision, is when a song is being reproduced at its full quality and tone with no other transformative processes going on. As in a review of a song. Then clip length is a major factor. But music happening to be played in the background of a bunch of kids playing a game where they are talking over it, sorry my friend, the RIAA's outrage notwithstanding that is just not actually infringing.
Simple questions. Did the owner of the song give permission to anyone to play that song without compensation?
See above. The law says I don't have to. Using another part of the same law, designed to be a bat to enforce cases of clear and undisputed infringement as a weapon doesn't make something that isn't infringing into something that is. Too many people see a DMCA notice and get afraid.
Did the owner give away their right to control how the music is used?
The owner never had the kind of control you are asserting. Fair use is still fair use. And I will make fair use until and unless it is legislated away. I recommend you read up on fair use and transformative use.
Re: RIAA trying to roll back fair use again (Score:2)
The problem with fair use provisions is that they aren't automatic, it's something the courts decide after an usually costly legal battle that can easily bankrupt the defendant. Twitch is doing what it does simply because it'd cost a ton of money to defend in court even if they were assured victory. And the copyright owners know this, that people will bend. Hence why, for most practical purposes, fair use is irrelevant. It's cheaper to license the content than to get a legal victory, and even cheaper to not
Re: RIAA trying to roll back fair use again (Score:1)
How exactly is the song transformed? Hint: it isn't.
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How exactly is the song transformed?
That's actually a good question. I'm glad you asked. In a legal sense for something to be transformative for copyright purposes it doesn't have to necessarily modify the original in ways that require de-compiling the original. That can be a method of transformation. Take a song, sample it, munge it through a synthesizer, that is certainly an aspect of transformation. In our example though, a bunch of kids gaming with a song that happens to be playing in the background, the transformation is the context
Re: RIAA trying to roll back fair use again (Score:2)
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“Shill!!!” Battle cry of the weak minded simpleton.
And there we have tactic number two. When you can't argue the points, then just be dismissive of the messenger. So let's go into antiquity for the classic reply.
"Ok, so let's just stipuliate than I am a weak minded simpleton. Now please explain to this weak minded simpleton where precisely the arguments made are wrong. And please be specific, because I am, after all, weak minded."
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then just be dismissive of the messenger.
You mean, exactly like you did?
Ok, so let's just stipuliate [sic] than I am a weak minded simpleton
First step is admitting it, glad you are making progress.
the DMCA should need more judicial over site. (Score:2)
the DMCA should need more judicial over site.
Or maybe make it an small fine like Red Light Enforcement Cameras (but even then an real cop needs to look it over) and if the do the Red Light Enforcement Camera route with $25K fines then by law you have rights to go to court over it.
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Red light cameras are civil fines so no police are involved. If you don’t pay the fine it goes to collections.
Re:RIAA trying to roll back fair use again (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA really doesn't like the fair use provisions. I'm pretty sure some music casually playing in the background would get laughed out of court in most jurisdictions.
Probably not, depending on use.
Here's the thing, though: a lot of streams have periods where they're not really streaming anything due to a necessary break. For example, it's general practice to have a "pre-stream" before the actual stream starts. This is a period when the "real" stream isn't happening, but they're still streaming audio and video. The purpose here is to give people some time to start watching and a chance to make sure their setup is working before the "show" actually starts. There also tend to be breaks that happen like that during a stream - pauses for setup of the next part or to allow the streamer to take a bathroom break or whatever.
And these "pre-streams" and "mid-stream breaks" tend to show static images or a slide show over music. And streaming complete music tracks with nothing over it is definitely not fair use. You're essentially being a radio station at that point, and it's fairly clear that radio stations have to license the music they play.
Of course, there are also times when copyrighted music gets used in video games, and the game has the rights for that music to play in the game, but does not have the right to allow that music to be re-streamed. This type of use is more likely to be "fair use" (and also have game sound over the music) but it's not necessarily the type of content the strikes are being issued for.
I don't really want to side with the RIAA on this, but remember: Twitch isn't free. It's ad-supported and people can pay to subscribe to channels as well as donating straight to the streamer through Twitch. That means that a lot of the music being streamed on Twitch is pretty much being done for commercial use without compensating the original artists. (Not that paying for licensing would necessarily do that, but that's a different issue.)
Oh, and of course, it could turn out that these strikes are all for in-game licensed music which you can barely hear over the streamer talking and game sound effects, which would be more likely to be actual fair use. But without knowing what the actual strikes are (and Twitch isn't saying) it's impossible to know.
they sued bars for having pinball's with music in (Score:4, Informative)
they sued bars for having pinball's with music in the game saying that you do not have an jukebox license for your site.
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Trouble is, if that was the majority of strikes being given out people wouldn't be a such a fervor over it.
Piped music like in a pre-stream is directly supplied by the streamer, If they aren't screening it they won't last long.
It's controversial largely because people get flagged for background music that's a secondary pickup, or for Game music that's copy written/had a change in status/pursued by an overzealous lawyer.
It's entirely possible to have a 5 year old VOD get flagged because you streamed a game w
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Streaming copyrighted material (Score:1)
Twitch noted that the only way to avoid DMCA (or Digital Millennium Copyright Act) strikes is to not stream copyrighted material in the first place
I've never used Twitch, but my understanding is that the whole point is streaming copyrighted material. They're video games, right? Very few video games are in the public domain.
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I've never used Twitch, but my understanding is that the whole point is streaming copyrighted material. They're video games, right? Very few video games are in the public domain.
A lot of video games these days explicitly allow streaming in their EULA, it's fairly well understood in the games industry that streaming acts as free advertising. Some games even have special "streamer modes" that disable music that isn't licensed for streaming. For example, Cyberpunk 2077 has a special "streamer" mode that would prevent certain music tracks from playing that CD Projekt Red didn't have permission to re-license for streaming. (It was one of the many bugs at launch: streamer mode missed suc
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Twitch noted that the only way to avoid DMCA (or Digital Millennium Copyright Act) strikes is to not stream copyrighted material in the first place
I've never used Twitch, but my understanding is that the whole point is streaming copyrighted material. They're video games, right? Very few video games are in the public domain.
Game publishers generally allow their games to be streamed (Nintendo can be weird about it), either via their EULA or by generally not complaining about it. You can run into issues if the game contains licensed music, and the publisher did not get (pay for) licenses for it to be used in streams or other online content in addition to the licenses they got to use it in the game.
If Twitch wanted to get ahead... (Score:5, Informative)
They aren't some fly by night company. Amazon has a market cap of $1.3 trillion yet somehow they can't come up with a remotely sane DMCA process. Instead they blindly pull videos. They send strike notices without enough information to find out how the media was infringing. They reference the video with a public link *WHICH THEY DELETE AS PART OF THE DMCA REQUEST*. That's right, not just hide, but actively take down the video from your account.
Congratulations you just got 1 of 3 strikes. Why? We're not going to tell you. For which video? We're not going to tell you, see if you can guess. You want to counter-claim? Oh that functionality is coming sometime in 2022. Try not to be the way we're not going to tell you to be in the future, you have two strikes left.
A major company and their entire DMCA process appears to have been designed by an intern on their first day on the job, and just left like that for 6 months. Congratulations Amazon, you made fucking YouTube look like good guys and that truly is an achievement.
For a good summary of the state of DMCA on Twitch I recommend Angry Joe's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Note, lots of swearing, and very dynamic volume (I mean Joe is Angry after all) so not really safe for work.
Re:If Twitch wanted to get ahead... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I imagine legally they can't share the original video with you because that would be copyright infringement and in violation of the takedown request.
False. The DMCA only requires it removed from circulation and what YouTube does is make a lot of sense: force the video private and mark in your channel precisely which video had the strike and by whom. It's also in direct convention of the counter-claim process (which Twitch doesn't have).
This isn't DMCA vs freedoms. This is a case of Twitch ballsing up something that the rest of the industry has standardised in a far better (I mean as good as it can get while the DMCA still exists) way.
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False. The DMCA only requires it removed from circulation and what YouTube does is make a lot of sense: force the video private and mark in your channel precisely which video had the strike and by whom. It's also in direct convention of the counter-claim process (which Twitch doesn't have).
The problem is that these are clips, clipped and titled by Twitch users not the broadcaster - so even if the clip is marked private and they can see the title its unlikely they'll know what the contents are.
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Time for a class-action lawsuit over freedom of speech. Corporate interests steamrolled the voice of the little guy. Laws passed by Congress, such as DMCA, can't trump the Constitution.
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You mean the Constitution that specifically authorizes Congress to make copyright law?
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No, Congress cannot pass laws that infringe on the Constitution. Well, they can, but they risk being struck down in the courts.
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Have you ever read the Constitution? It quite plainly authorizes Congress to create copyright law.
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Yes, but it doesn't say they can define "copyright" in ways that override other parts of the Constitution, such as 1st Amendment.
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The first amendment and copyright can be in conflict. This is why the fair use defense to copyright infringement exists. If there is an actual free speech issue, such as using copyright to prevent criticism or discussion of a work, the court will probably side with the first amendment and decide it is fair use. On the other hand, if the only issue is unauthorized use of a work, then copyright law will prevail.
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I feel like you've never read the constitution. It's not a long document, but let me pull out the relevant part you missed:
Article 1 Section 8 Clause 8:
"[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.""
Your right to free speech does not preclude copyright. There's nothing unconstitutional about the DMCA, and any class action you propose c
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The Constitution does not authorize Congress to make laws that violate the Constitution. It says just the opposite. It laws out the powers of the Federal Government, then says all other powers belong to the States and the People. Any law Congress passes the violates any part of the Constitution is null and void.
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US Constitution, Section 8.
"The Congress shall have power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
In other words, Congress has the power to make patent and copyright law.
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Storage is expensive (Score:2)
I think you're missing the point. Probably because it was cleverly disguised as a DMCA takedown.
Storage is expensive. Engineers are expensive. Running large distributed systems is expensive, and the easiest way to cut costs is to cull content that isn't actively producing revenue.
I doubt streamers get many subs/gifts/bits/whatever-tokens from old their old recorded content. Why store something that isn't an active income generator? The whole vod system is just a byproduct of the original system design that
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Storage is expensive. Engineers are expensive. Running large distributed systems is expensive, and the easiest way to cut costs is to cull content that isn't actively producing revenue.
That sounds like a fantastic comment to make about any company other than Twitch, you know Twitch... the brand owned by the company who provides 32% of the worlds distributed computing services, storage, and run over 250 hyperscale datacentres in the world, which is only slightly less than all other competitors combined.
A bunch of twitch streams barely move the needle on their storage.
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Oh, I haven't forgotten who owns Twitch. The same company that actively surveilles their own warehouse employees to the level of tracking time used for bathroom breaks. The desperation to wring out every last ounce of value from any resource they touch is quite evident. Why would we ever expect such a company to treat storage any differently?
Royalty Free Music (Score:2)
There's several Royalty Free Music archives available, use those instead...
Okay... just this once... (Score:3)
Normally I understand how convoluted this whole legal area has become. It's loathsome. I don't know how you fix this.
But to the "vast majority" of targeted streamers who were listening to background music while streaming:
Don't do that.
Problem solved.
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inb4 alinity gets copystriked by corporate evil
Pretty sure it's just about bean counters (again) (Score:2)
But someone in accounting has probably decided that doing so would lower shareholder profits by 0.014% so they won't let it happen, because
Good (Score:2)
All these automated takedowns on all the platforms have made copyrighted music radioactive.
Notice how the basic purpose of this: to license the songs for money, never ever comes up. The last time I've read about a youtuber licensing music was when he got struck by the bots even though he streamed the song legally.
Overall this development reduces the amount of copyright infected songs being played which is a good thing in my book.
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This is simple. Just pay artists. And stop stealing content, in this case music, fot your own profit. Hey, here's a thought... How's about we make it legal to steal software code for your own profit? Don't like that much, huh? Neither do artists. Duh.
'For', not 'fot'. My bad. And.... First Post!!!! Lol.
Artificial pumping up value of la-dee-dahs (Score:3)
So somebody sings "la-dee-dah love love shake your booty blah blah blah", and the record mafia pays the "artist" little for it, and now it needs to be treated like the contents of a fucking Brinks truck?
Ding-dong I can't wait until the record cartel is finally dead. There are no limits to the insanity for them.
Deleting vods permanently doesn't work (Score:1)
"we strongly recommend that you permanently delete anything that contains that material."
Except Twitch doesn't actually delete vods.
Streamers report DMCA strikes on "deleted" VODs, evidence show clips permanently stored on Twitch servers - https://www.ginx.tv/en/twitch/... [www.ginx.tv]