36 ms·

Twitch streamers report DMCA takedowns for in-game sound effects

92 points by nitinreddy88 6y ago

perlpimp 6y ago
Now there is even more precarious position to already sane of YouTube artists. This is precisely kind of fear that will kill the platform.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  Their prime new corporate-backed competition, Mixer, got killed earlier this year. So they're quite emboldened to sacrifice users in their ambitions now. Where are they going to go? YouTube? Random audience-less zero revenue platforms?
  - ewindal 6y ago
    Youtube streaming is in many ways bigger than twitch. It has way more concurrent viewers, and the top channels are usually bigger. But there’s no discoverability. You can’t really move there or start there to build an audience.
ashneo76 6y ago
Good. We need more understanding of how terrible the DMCA is. Please support EFF at https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca
meekrohprocess 6y ago
It must be tough to work in an industry where your livelihood depends on an entity which you have no meaningful relationship with. Amazon sellers, Youtube vloggers, Twitch streamers, Instagram dropshippers, etc etc. You can run those businesses on other platforms, like eBay and Vimeo, but they will almost certainly fail if you do. But if you don't, you might wake up one morning without a business. Too stressful for me: maybe a start would be expecting contracts rather than EULAs for people who pay 3rd-parties to run a business on their platform.
- mike_d 6y ago
  My fathers friend owned a gas station in a small town that was on the route out of town to a large packing plant. One day the company was bought out by a larger competitor and within a few weeks the flow of trucks and employees dried up along the road. He went out of business about 6 months later. This isn't a new thing, and we should stop pretending like the internet somehow invented parasitic businesses.
  - viraptor 6y ago
    Why is that parasitic? If you provide a gas station and the truck drivers find it cost effective to refuel there, that sounds symbiotic?
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Commensalism, I guess?
    - nightcracker 6y ago
      It is parasitic because of the power dynamic. If you close business the truck drivers are largely unaffected. Vice versa and you are also out of business.
    - thomastjeffery 6y ago
      GP isn't talking about the relationship between the gas station and customers. They are talking about the relationship between the gas station and the business that acquired it.
- ozim 6y ago
  Yeah basically "pro" users should be ruled as employees of the platform like Uber drivers.
xfitm3 6y ago
My mind could be playing tricks on me but my sense is that there is a surge in DMCA takedown requests. Has anyone seen anything that might explain the trend?
- echelon 6y ago
  It's not just you. In the last month: - youtube-dl targeted by RIAA - widevine decryption targeted by Google - Google drops Google Play Music, which allowed custom uploads - increase in Twitch takedowns The RIAA seems to be emboldened. Google is singing to their tune, and now they're trying to get Amazon to do the same.
  - gundmc 6y ago
    > Google drops Google Play Music, which allowed custom uploads Google Play Music's successor, YouTube Music, also allows custom uploads.
    - tehbeard 6y ago
      Doesn't seem to work on older phones, I've had to make the jump to VLC.
    - FineTralfazz 6y ago
      Not well. They’re isolated in their own section of the app and don’t seamlessly integrate with included music like they did in Play Music.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    On Twitch's point specifically, they claim: > Until May of this year, streamers received fewer than 50 music-related DMCA notifications each year on Twitch. Beginning in May, however, representatives for the major record labels started sending thousands of DMCA notifications each week that targeted creators’ archives, mostly for snippets of tracks in years-old Clips. https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/11/11/music-related-copyright-claims-and-twitch/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/11/11/music-related-copyright...
Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
I hope this madness will go deeper until everyone will start screaming to how insane this is.
ehsankia 6y ago
Putting aside how horrible DMCA is in general, the article is specifically about invalid takedown requests for completely unrelated content. This is just ridiculous, and won't stop until there's real consequences for filing invalid requests. As far as I know, there's currently no penalty whatsoever for it, which allows these companies to just open the flood gates and spray in every direction with zero fucks given about destroying people's livelihood. I'm curious if there's any possibility for a counter-lawsuit against these companies for mass filing invalid DMCA requests. Maybe once they get burned a few times they'll at least try to be smarter about how they file them?
- rattt 6y ago
  Misleading title as those are not actual DMCA takedowns. Twitch uses audiblemagic to scan all saved VODs of streams for music and mutes anything it finds specifically to prevent streamers from getting DMCAd. Those are not DMCA notices sent by any copyright holder, that is just Twitch's internal system muting anything they think might be music. Lots of streamers then incorrectly end up calling those automutes being "DMCAd" on stream and Twitter. You can tell by all the screenshots being of Twitch's VOD manager page that shows streamers what got muted. Notices about actual DMCAs on the other hand are only sent to the streamer via email and don't show anywhere on Twitch currently. Lots of people confusing those two including some news orgs. RIAA and the music industry are hitting Twitch very hard right now with massive waves of takedowns mostly for people just plainly playing music on stream but also the occasional claim for ingame music made specifically for the game or things like people doing outdoor streams and walking by some music playing randomly in the background in a store somewhere but there's also a ton of misinformation being spread by people completely misunderstanding basic things about both how Twitch and copyright law work unfortunately. It's quite a mess.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    Are you sure about that one? AFAIK Twitch's use of AudibleMagic has existed for years, and they only mute audio in vods when detected. Did that change? These on the other hand have had creator actually banned after 3 instances, which sound much more in-line with DMCA than auto-detection which Twitch runs.
antpls 6y ago
In all this DMCA affair, I can't stop to think that Twitch is at fault here. You had think Twitch would stand up for its streamer base, like organizing a massive class action, do some Prop 22's level thing, etc It looks like Twitch is just relaying bogus DMCA requests to streamers, and let them take all responsibilities. No help to find which segment or vod. Maybe I'm all wrong, but that looks like an even worse relationship that the standard "gig" economy known so far.
- trashburger 6y ago
  They are legally required to. It works the same way on YouTube. If you are a host you are legally required to immediately take the content down and forward the DMCA claim to the accused. The accused can then file a counter-claim and the content will be re-instated, after which the initial filing party may choose to not pursue or decide to take the accused to the court.
  - anonymousab 6y ago
    It's not quite the same. You are correct for DMCA claims, more or less, but the automated precursor step with muting by audiblemagic (or in the case of YouTube, contentid) is one under Twitch's control. In the case of YouTube there's actual settlement rules they are trying to abide, but Twitch's clubbed approach is by their own volition. In both cases there is a clear impression that they are vastly valuing their relationship with larger content corps over their content creators and users. Contesting invalid results from these automated systems requires appealing to the very same automated mega tech corp support hell and will more often than not end miserably. At best, you get a repeated copy paste from Twitch support twitter staff telling you to 'read the eula next time' (to avoid getting muted or banned for a public domain sound effect) because they've engineered a system and business model that is hostile to reasonable human intervention. The overall situation is further complicated by the fact that Twitch has terrible tooling for dealing with clips, and instead of letting users just auto mute or auto takedown any clips that received a DMCA rather than striking them, they received... no options. So many users were left to crawl tens to hundreds of thousands of clips for potential violations of both an automagic black box and unknown future overzealous or malicious copyright claimers. The only reasonable approach there was to just backup and then delete everything. But guess what? Deleting via the UI and API didn't guarantee a clip was actually deleted on Twitch's backend. And you could still face DMCA complaints, strikes from Twitch and other repercussions from content and things that happened years ago, with no recourse. Overall, there are many things Twitch could have done to abide by both the letter and spirit of the law while also giving their content creators a way to handle things reasonably. Instead, they did effectively nothing for their users, and seem to have bent over backwards and sacrificed their users in order to appease external content rights holders above and beyond what was required by law. Much like YouTube does, but at least YouTube has prior legal fallout and trauma and the greater Alphabet user-hostile ideologies to justify their awful approaches.
pedro2 6y ago
Yes. Take it all down. The system is working as intended, killing the Golden Goose. Now if someone would just create a playlist called DMCA-proof songs.... :)
- technimad 6y ago
  There used to be something like this, the pod safe music network. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podsafe_Music_Network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podsafe_Music_Network
- trollied 6y ago
  Twitch already provide such a thing. https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/09/30/introducing-soundtrack-by-twitch-rights-cleared-music-for-all-twitch-creators/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/09/30/introducing-soundtrack-...
  - dschu 6y ago
    Except I have a friend who streams on regular basis and got his stream muted while playing songs from Twitch’s own streaming service. Wouldn’t recommend using that at the moment.
- Vespasian 6y ago
  Alternatively, is there a way to license music for streaming on twitch? At least for professional streamers, that would make sense and it could align their goals with those of the music industry.
- uncoder0 6y ago
  pretzel.rocks is a great company doing just this for streamers, I have no stake in the business I just know the founders and they're great people who truly care about content creators and musicians alike.

92 points by nitinreddy88 6y ago

Now there is even more precarious position to already sane of YouTube artists. This is precisely kind of fear that will kill the platform.

anonymousab 6y ago
Their prime new corporate-backed competition, Mixer, got killed earlier this year. So they're quite emboldened to sacrifice users in their ambitions now. Where are they going to go? YouTube? Random audience-less zero revenue platforms?
- ewindal 6y ago
  Youtube streaming is in many ways bigger than twitch. It has way more concurrent viewers, and the top channels are usually bigger. But there’s no discoverability. You can’t really move there or start there to build an audience.

ashneo76 6y ago

Good. We need more understanding of how terrible the DMCA is. Please support EFF at https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca https://www.eff.org/issues/dmca

meekrohprocess 6y ago

It must be tough to work in an industry where your livelihood depends on an entity which you have no meaningful relationship with. Amazon sellers, Youtube vloggers, Twitch streamers, Instagram dropshippers, etc etc. You can run those businesses on other platforms, like eBay and Vimeo, but they will almost certainly fail if you do. But if you don't, you might wake up one morning without a business. Too stressful for me: maybe a start would be expecting contracts rather than EULAs for people who pay 3rd-parties to run a business on their platform.

mike_d 6y ago
My fathers friend owned a gas station in a small town that was on the route out of town to a large packing plant. One day the company was bought out by a larger competitor and within a few weeks the flow of trucks and employees dried up along the road. He went out of business about 6 months later. This isn't a new thing, and we should stop pretending like the internet somehow invented parasitic businesses.
- viraptor 6y ago
  Why is that parasitic? If you provide a gas station and the truck drivers find it cost effective to refuel there, that sounds symbiotic?
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Commensalism, I guess?
  - nightcracker 6y ago
    It is parasitic because of the power dynamic. If you close business the truck drivers are largely unaffected. Vice versa and you are also out of business.
  - thomastjeffery 6y ago
    GP isn't talking about the relationship between the gas station and customers. They are talking about the relationship between the gas station and the business that acquired it.
ozim 6y ago
Yeah basically "pro" users should be ruled as employees of the platform like Uber drivers.

xfitm3 6y ago

My mind could be playing tricks on me but my sense is that there is a surge in DMCA takedown requests. Has anyone seen anything that might explain the trend?

echelon 6y ago
It's not just you. In the last month: - youtube-dl targeted by RIAA - widevine decryption targeted by Google - Google drops Google Play Music, which allowed custom uploads - increase in Twitch takedowns The RIAA seems to be emboldened. Google is singing to their tune, and now they're trying to get Amazon to do the same.
- gundmc 6y ago
  > Google drops Google Play Music, which allowed custom uploads Google Play Music's successor, YouTube Music, also allows custom uploads.
  - tehbeard 6y ago
    Doesn't seem to work on older phones, I've had to make the jump to VLC.
  - FineTralfazz 6y ago
    Not well. They’re isolated in their own section of the app and don’t seamlessly integrate with included music like they did in Play Music.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  On Twitch's point specifically, they claim: > Until May of this year, streamers received fewer than 50 music-related DMCA notifications each year on Twitch. Beginning in May, however, representatives for the major record labels started sending thousands of DMCA notifications each week that targeted creators’ archives, mostly for snippets of tracks in years-old Clips. https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/11/11/music-related-copyright-claims-and-twitch/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/11/11/music-related-copyright...

Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago

I hope this madness will go deeper until everyone will start screaming to how insane this is.

ehsankia 6y ago

Putting aside how horrible DMCA is in general, the article is specifically about invalid takedown requests for completely unrelated content. This is just ridiculous, and won't stop until there's real consequences for filing invalid requests. As far as I know, there's currently no penalty whatsoever for it, which allows these companies to just open the flood gates and spray in every direction with zero fucks given about destroying people's livelihood. I'm curious if there's any possibility for a counter-lawsuit against these companies for mass filing invalid DMCA requests. Maybe once they get burned a few times they'll at least try to be smarter about how they file them?

rattt 6y ago
Misleading title as those are not actual DMCA takedowns. Twitch uses audiblemagic to scan all saved VODs of streams for music and mutes anything it finds specifically to prevent streamers from getting DMCAd. Those are not DMCA notices sent by any copyright holder, that is just Twitch's internal system muting anything they think might be music. Lots of streamers then incorrectly end up calling those automutes being "DMCAd" on stream and Twitter. You can tell by all the screenshots being of Twitch's VOD manager page that shows streamers what got muted. Notices about actual DMCAs on the other hand are only sent to the streamer via email and don't show anywhere on Twitch currently. Lots of people confusing those two including some news orgs. RIAA and the music industry are hitting Twitch very hard right now with massive waves of takedowns mostly for people just plainly playing music on stream but also the occasional claim for ingame music made specifically for the game or things like people doing outdoor streams and walking by some music playing randomly in the background in a store somewhere but there's also a ton of misinformation being spread by people completely misunderstanding basic things about both how Twitch and copyright law work unfortunately. It's quite a mess.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  Are you sure about that one? AFAIK Twitch's use of AudibleMagic has existed for years, and they only mute audio in vods when detected. Did that change? These on the other hand have had creator actually banned after 3 instances, which sound much more in-line with DMCA than auto-detection which Twitch runs.

antpls 6y ago

In all this DMCA affair, I can't stop to think that Twitch is at fault here. You had think Twitch would stand up for its streamer base, like organizing a massive class action, do some Prop 22's level thing, etc It looks like Twitch is just relaying bogus DMCA requests to streamers, and let them take all responsibilities. No help to find which segment or vod. Maybe I'm all wrong, but that looks like an even worse relationship that the standard "gig" economy known so far.

trashburger 6y ago
They are legally required to. It works the same way on YouTube. If you are a host you are legally required to immediately take the content down and forward the DMCA claim to the accused. The accused can then file a counter-claim and the content will be re-instated, after which the initial filing party may choose to not pursue or decide to take the accused to the court.
- anonymousab 6y ago
  It's not quite the same. You are correct for DMCA claims, more or less, but the automated precursor step with muting by audiblemagic (or in the case of YouTube, contentid) is one under Twitch's control. In the case of YouTube there's actual settlement rules they are trying to abide, but Twitch's clubbed approach is by their own volition. In both cases there is a clear impression that they are vastly valuing their relationship with larger content corps over their content creators and users. Contesting invalid results from these automated systems requires appealing to the very same automated mega tech corp support hell and will more often than not end miserably. At best, you get a repeated copy paste from Twitch support twitter staff telling you to 'read the eula next time' (to avoid getting muted or banned for a public domain sound effect) because they've engineered a system and business model that is hostile to reasonable human intervention. The overall situation is further complicated by the fact that Twitch has terrible tooling for dealing with clips, and instead of letting users just auto mute or auto takedown any clips that received a DMCA rather than striking them, they received... no options. So many users were left to crawl tens to hundreds of thousands of clips for potential violations of both an automagic black box and unknown future overzealous or malicious copyright claimers. The only reasonable approach there was to just backup and then delete everything. But guess what? Deleting via the UI and API didn't guarantee a clip was actually deleted on Twitch's backend. And you could still face DMCA complaints, strikes from Twitch and other repercussions from content and things that happened years ago, with no recourse. Overall, there are many things Twitch could have done to abide by both the letter and spirit of the law while also giving their content creators a way to handle things reasonably. Instead, they did effectively nothing for their users, and seem to have bent over backwards and sacrificed their users in order to appease external content rights holders above and beyond what was required by law. Much like YouTube does, but at least YouTube has prior legal fallout and trauma and the greater Alphabet user-hostile ideologies to justify their awful approaches.

pedro2 6y ago

Yes. Take it all down. The system is working as intended, killing the Golden Goose. Now if someone would just create a playlist called DMCA-proof songs.... :)

technimad 6y ago
There used to be something like this, the pod safe music network. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podsafe_Music_Network https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podsafe_Music_Network
trollied 6y ago
Twitch already provide such a thing. https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/09/30/introducing-soundtrack-by-twitch-rights-cleared-music-for-all-twitch-creators/ https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2020/09/30/introducing-soundtrack-...
- dschu 6y ago
  Except I have a friend who streams on regular basis and got his stream muted while playing songs from Twitch’s own streaming service. Wouldn’t recommend using that at the moment.
Vespasian 6y ago
Alternatively, is there a way to license music for streaming on twitch? At least for professional streamers, that would make sense and it could align their goals with those of the music industry.
uncoder0 6y ago
pretzel.rocks is a great company doing just this for streamers, I have no stake in the business I just know the founders and they're great people who truly care about content creators and musicians alike.