TWITCH STREAMERS NOW AT MERCY OF COPYRIGHT CLAIMS

If you weren’t familiar with Twitch before COVID-19, chances are quarantine changed that for you. With streaming as the temporary norm in the music industry, Twitch has been one of the leading virtual platforms. Artists and even entire festivals have utilized the platform to bring music to fans in the safety of their homes.

However, some of those artists have suddenly come under fire by copyright claims. Although Twitch’s policy is quite apparent on their website, many streamers have been able to avoid any type of backlash thus far. The policy from the Twitch Music Guidelines reads as follows.

“We ask that creators only share content for which they have the necessary rights. It is a violation of our policies to stream or upload content containing copyrighted music unless you have the appropriate rights or authority to share such music on Twitch.”

Battles with copyright infringement are not something new to internet users. Plenty of people are familiar with the strict policies YouTube has put in place over the past few years. For whatever reason, Twitch has followed suit by deciding to become firm on copyright issues. Multiple popular Twitch streamers have had their content removed as well as received notices.

Streamers there was a recent update to #Twitch TOS about playing MUSIC on stream please make sure that you read them becuase it can result in a copyright strike ?

This applys to past VOD and clips so please don’t get banned and read ? pic.twitter.com/y9OWAvJaDn

— Bafeeki #FeekiFam (@Bafeeki) June 8, 2020

Don’t be too quick to blame Twitch for this frustrating news. The website is legally obligated to proceed with these takedowns to protect itself through Safe Harbor. Otherwise, the platform itself could be held responsible for copyright infringement of its users.

Moving forward, streamers will need to be careful of the audio in their streams. But what about those like Jakenbake who have hundreds of thousands or clips to sift through for copyrighted music? Streamers will have the daunting task of manually deleting each clip.

This news begs the question: will Twitch eventually put a content ID system in place, like on YouTube? It’s hard to tell, but users should be prepared for the changes.