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Twitch suspends DragonForce guitarist Herman Li for playing his own music
- clircle 6y agoWell, did he just write the songs or does he own the copyright? The former isn't enough to make this a wrongful suspension.
- blindm 6y agoThe DMCA takedowns have their nets cast too wide. Uncopyrighted works get taken down all the time.
- paranorman 6y agoAre you implying he owns the copyright?
- yokoprime 6y agoYes
- zinekeller 6y agoThe problem is that Universal is the owner of the copyrights (including the lyrical and syncronisation copyrights), and this is DMCA we're talking about. This would end up differently in Europe or UK (the original authors are irrevocably entitled to some percentage of the revenue, typically 5%) but DMCA is based on American laws (which do not have these protections).
- mnd999 6y agoRight but surely his recording contract with Universal would allow him to perform his songs.
- zinekeller 6y agoIn a commercial context?
- est31 6y agoMaybe even in a commercial context. In fact it's quite likely that concerts get treated specially. The issue is, these automated censorship tools don't encode the nuanced clauses of such contracts. They err on the side of banning, even if it's perfectly legitimate. Also IMO in the digital age it's so stupid that teachers can't even read a book to children via Zoom without a license...
- wbl 6y agoConcerts are commercial contexts.
- aidenn0 6y agoProbably live performances, but not on video recording
- colejohnson66 6y agoGenuine question: where’s the line? Because he’s still playing it live (live streaming). Is it just the act of being recorded?
- shawnz 6y agoAren't they signed to Universal?
- Nullabillity 6y agoLooks like the rest of the band participates in the channel too..
- dafoex 6y agoI think they are implying that public domain works are attacked globally because a company thinks they own it in one country. Take Happy Birthday, for example: in the UK it is considered a traditional song and is therefore public domain, but in the US there are no such protections against copyright and therefore Time Warner thinks they own it.
- est31 6y ago> in the US there are no such protections against copyright and therefore Time Warner thinks they own it. I don't think even they think that anymore: > On June 28, 2016, the final settlement was officially granted and the court declared that the song was in the public domain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyright_status https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyrigh...
- yokoprime 6y agoIts an automatic copystrike
- wavefunction 6y agoCopyright doesn't cover live performances, this would be ASCAP licensing or something similar though it seems if he's "playing his own music" then none of the above should apply.
- shawnz 6y agoCopyright law does cover live performances. ASCAP is an agency which enforces copyright on live performances.
- montjoy 6y agoJust so people aren’t misled - ASCAP is a not-for-profit, it isn’t a government agency. I think a more accurate word for it is “cabal” since most people don’t know much about them and that they often work against (IMO) the public interest.
- wavefunction 6y agoI meant that someone can't assert copyright over your live performance of your own compositions as it occurs. Copyright can be asserted over a recording of course. Someone might try to assert copyright over portions of the music I suppose. In this context though there's no way for copyright to be valid unless he's assigned the copyright to someone else which doesn't seem to be the case barring any further information.
- shawnz 6y ago> I meant that someone can't assert copyright over your live performance of your own compositions as it occurs. They can, that is how ASCAP functions. > In this context though there's no way for copyright to be valid unless he's assigned the copyright to someone else which doesn't seem to be the case The copyright for their music is held by Universal
- whimsicalism 6y agoSo absurd that an original performance of a copyrighted song is an infringement.
- Spivak 6y agoWhy? You’re literally talking someone else’s song and reproducing it. You just have to ask the copyright holder for permission and then you’re good. It’s how the whole world of covers work.
- lostcolony 6y agoIn the US, you don't need permission. You DO have to pay a fee (royalties; pretty sure nothing upfront). It's a compulsory license.
- learc83 6y agoIn the US you don’t need to get the copyright holder's permission to record cover songs, you need to pay for a mechanical license. In the case of live performances you don’t need to get permission directly. The venue is the one that pays royalties to a handful of groups that have agreements with thousands of artists.
- montjoy 6y agoYup. I have a strong “fuck you” to ASCAP for charging my favorite small coffee shop insurmountable fees and forcing them to stop having live musical performances. FWIW the musicians played mostly original work. ASCAP has also been actively against the EFF, Creative Commons, and others. > In June 2010, ASCAP sent letters to its members soliciting donations to fight entities that support weaker copyright restrictions, such as Public Knowledge, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Creative Commons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composers,_Authors_and_Publishers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Composer...
- whimsicalism 6y ago> It’s how the whole world of covers work. Yes, I am aware of how the law currently works. I think that it is unethical and that my playing of some pop song on the piano shouldn't be covered by property law because my performance is not owned by someone else.
- dafoex 6y agoThis is a fair point, though. Just because you're the producer doesn't mean you're the owner. Book authors often go to publishing houses to get their book published, in which case the author has little control over their work. Also, commissioned works are usually copyright to the commissioner or other employer, that's why Doctor Who is copyright to the BBC, not Steven Moffat.
- wbl 6y agoSFWA standard terms are the author grants US publishing rights, not the entire copyright. https://www.sfwa.org/2009/07/05/model-contract-hardcover/ https://www.sfwa.org/2009/07/05/model-contract-hardcover/ Authors should never sign anything worse then that.
- wolco2 6y agoThat would still cover the right to publish in US territory.
- wbl 6y agoWhich the author gets royalties for giving. The system is made so authors get money and publishers do too from their books. They are jointly using the authors copyrighted work for mutual benefit. What's not included and valuable? Adaptations, foreign translations, sequels, etc.
- wbl 6y agoMusic copyright is complicated and there are certain rights that attach to each performance vs. the music. If I sit down and play Bach that recording cannot be copied without my permission but you can sit down and record your own performance of Bach.
- wolco2 6y agoBut if you wrote something today and recorded I would need a license to print your words. A license to use your exact song if longer than 7-15 seconds. A license to perform a cover if it sounds the same.
- realmod 6y agoAnd you'll also need a seperate synchronization license to play the song with any visuals. Music rights are ridiculously convoluted.
- jowsie 6y agoBut can you sit down and record your own performance of Dragonforce?
- bmn__ 6y agoYes, compulsory licencing and royalty sharing applies. Also, if the recording is made from a performance in a venue, the owner must obtain a blanket licence from the music rights organisation. The above is true for a couple of jurisdictions.
- dpedu 6y agoSome time ago he announced that some of Dragonforce's albums are "dmca free" and "allowed" to be played on twitch. I couldn't find any more details than this: https://old.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/gzx3s0/herman_li_guitarist_of_dragonforce_announces_3/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/gzx3s0/herman_li_gu...
- variable11 6y agoDMCA is trash, anyone enforcing corporate greed on ordinary humans is fundamentally evil and worthy of banishment.
- Spivak 6y agoI really don’t see how this is news. Automated system that matches song samples and can’t possibly know if a steamer went and licensed the copyrighted music on their stream trips on hearing copyrighted music. The banhammer falls automatically because there are so few cases (like this one) of legitimate usage requiring the content to be restored. Like if anyone on HN was tasked to design a system to protect your companies asses against copyright lawsuits you would implement the same thing.
- zinekeller 6y ago> I really don’t see how this is news. Me too, for a different reason (he doesn't technically own the copyrights, Universal does). I do not support it, but if I were a signed artist, this wouldn't shocked me.
- crispyporkbites 6y agoThen it’s not a system that works and shouldn’t be in place. You can’t just say, that’ll do, it’s too hard or expensive to do this properly, so let’s not. Amazon is one of the wealthiest companies in the world and could easily manually moderate channels before auto-banning them. As consumers we don’t have to accept these excuses for substandard services.
- Spivak 6y agoI don’t get this. The entire point of these systems is to detect and stop copyright violations because they open up platforms to lawsuits. It’s not enough to just respond to DMCA takedowns after the lawsuit between Viacom and YouTube because (I think pretty reasonably personally) these platforms previously enabled copyright violations at a scale that literally could not be policed by copyright holders and so ContentID and the like was the compromise.
- kodt 6y agoMore evidence that automated systems like this should not be used.
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- corobo 6y agoJust to point it out this was back in Oct at the height of the DMCA stuff* I believe. Not to say it makes it any better but I can see how they might have been trigger happy at the time. I opened this article "Again?!" * Ooh I've ended up on the top. For context to people not in and around Twitch the RIAA woke up and started handing out DMCAs like it was going out of fashion. Twitch naturally had to respond to the DMCAs to keep fair harbour and the masses misdirected their anger at Twitch for a while. Low rung news saw the ability to inhale clicks so they've written it in a "lol stupid Twitch" attitude instead of the mid-noughties classic "Fuck the RIAA"
- masklinn 6y ago> Ooh I've ended up on the top. For context to people not in and around Twitch the RIAA woke up and started handing out DMCAs like it was going out of fashion. Twitch naturally had to respond to the DMCAs to keep fair harbour and the masses misdirected their anger at Twitch for a while. I don't think they've stopped either, CDPR had to issue a warning to streamers to keep the music muted, because there are bits of licensed music which Cyberpunk 2077's dedicated setting doesn't mute / replace, leading to possible DMCA strikes on streamer channels.
- corobo 6y agoYeah I've heard (But I don't know the source) that they're investing in tech to assist in takedowns of live content too. Inb4 streamers start baiting RIAAbots to inflate their view count
- trollied 6y agoThe article is from October & he’s been streaming again on Twitch for a while. Not news.
- mkl95 6y agoDoesn't this Twitch feature basically ban games like Guitar Hero? What about game OSTs that are also sold separately?
- pricechild 6y agoSee also: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22168295/cyberpunk-2077-twitch-dmca-copyright-strike-music-turn-off-bug https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22168295/cyberpunk-2077-... > ... a certain song (CDPR didn’t say which one) during the game’s “Braindance” sequences might trigger a Digital Millennium Copyright Act strike. That’s even if you’re using the specific in-game setting designed to toggle off copyrighted music for this exact reason.
- bsanr2 6y agoCory Doctorow posted an excellent thread yesterday on the dysfunction inherent in automated IP-related moderation: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1337605157777862656 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1337605157777862656
- thinkingemote 6y agoI wish he would start blogging, Twitter seems such a waste on him
- bmn__ 6y ago• https://craphound.com/feed https://craphound.com/feed • https://boingboing.net/author/cory_doctorow_1/feed https://boingboing.net/author/cory_doctorow_1/feed
- thinkingemote 6y agoI was being sarcastic :)
- libertine 6y agoWhen will platforms start to be charged for their mistakes? Pretty sure if they had to make financial compensations for their mistakes, they would start using humans more often to support this crap automated system. You would start to see more people being able to reach human support, getting human replies, etc. Would be pretty easy - for each day without reply, fine X. For X day of suspension, fine Y. And so on. If they give tools for people to make their lively hood on, then they are responsible for their mistakes. This is happening for far too long, on too many platforms: Youtube, Amazon, Twitch... only if you have special access to insiders, or if you're some kind of celebrity, or you reach a massive outcry, is when you are able to reach a human that solves your problem rather quickly? I say that's bullshit. Make them pay.
- true_religion 6y agoWhen you enter into a contract with Twitch, the language basically says "neither of us puts any money into this venture to begin with, and we share profits as they come and none of us is responsible for any losses incurred by the other". The same language that keeps Twitch from being responsible here, keeps you from being responsible if your controversial content causes advertisers to pull out of Twitch, making them lose potential profits.
- golemotron 6y agoWhat does the contract say?
- zamadatix 6y agoThe ToS makes no guarantee it'll be there to make your livelihood on tomorrow because you are today. Tomorrow it could say "no music, we don't like that noise" and you'd be shit outta luck because video hosting isn't a public service. Not to mention this doesn't solve anything, who arbitrates the absolute mountain of disputes that come out of this which is just the same thing moved up a level? Especially when someone boys a competitor. The "simple" idea would take hundreds of pages of detail to even be implementable before we started talking about if it was a good idea.
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- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoHow does the record industry bully behemoths like Amazon (Twitch) and Google (Youtube)?
- nerdponx 6y agoThey don't bully the tech corps, they bully content creators using the DMCA, and the tech corps have to let them do it by law. And big corps in general, tech or not, know that it's in their best interest to not blatantly and visibly break the law, lest it invite additional regulations or penalties. The problem fundamentally is a warped counterproductive copyright law that enables organizations like the RIAA to do what they do.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoNot suggesting they break the law. I mean, these copyright laws were put in place by intense lobbying from megacorps. Why don't megacorps that stand to gain from more relaxed copyright law do the same?
- nerdponx 6y agoWhat's to gain by actively fighting the RIAA? They know that they are an oligopoly when it comes to content distribution. They only have to keep content creators happy enough to avoid disruption by upstart competition, and they only have to keep regulators happy enough to not get regulated harder. It's not like there are serious alternatives to Twitch, Youtube, and Facebook if you want to make money streaming. All 3 of those companies have more or less the same incentives to act (or not act) in the same way.
- podiki 6y agoAll these comments and not one of how awesome Herman Li is? Even if you are not at all into the type of music he plays (though, come on, shredding and video game sounds!) I think there's quite a virtuosity to be appreciated. Plus he tries (not sure how that fits with record companies) to let people use his music as they want.
- grawprog 6y agoHas he gotten better live? I remember his older live shows he could be a real drunken sloppy mess compared to the album recordings. I was fairly disappointed seeing them live.
- thinkingemote 6y agoHe streamed his live shows on twitch and when the signal coverage worked out, they were really good.
- podiki 6y agoI haven't seen in many years, but the one concert I saw I remember being most awesome (this was almost 15 years ago now). I do remember everyone having a beer handy on stage, but don't remember it getting too messy at the end.
- scelerat 6y agoI'm naturally concerned about this because my brother in law has a regular, ongoing streaming music show/channel on Twitch with live and pre-recorded bands (most of them local to the SF bay area). He's putting a lot of effort into it: professional-level sound engineering and lighting (his day job is a recording engineer/producer and, pre-covid, stage lighting engineer), multiple camera shoots with dollys and booms and an experienced volunteer crew. He of course is aware of Twitch's trigger-happy approach to DMCA and so one of the requirements is that bands play only original music they own the copyright to. So far so good, but I fear one day the algorithm is going to have a false positive, or someone busts out a spontaneous Happy Birthday, and then his channel suddenly goes dark, and all that hard work gets tanked.
- gverrilla 6y agohe should stop working for such a tyrant
- zamalek 6y agoIt's pretty easy, supposedly, to set up streaming to both platforms. He should do so and make the alternative known to his viewers.
- jimmydorry 6y agoTo get partnered (and really start earning on twitch), you have to forgo that opportunity via twitch exclusivity.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoHe really should, so to speak, spread his risk; there's multiple streaming and video platforms, and unless he got paid a ton of money to become exclusive to Twitch he is under no obligation to be exclusive to Twitch. I mean I know he'll get the biggest audience via Twitch but it's a big risk to bet everything on one proverbial horse.
- 013a 6y agoI can't speak for why Herman Li, or any other musician, would be banned for DMCA. But, its my understanding that Twitch pays for a live performance license from the major music publishers to enable musicians to stream on their platform [1]. Of course, this didn't work for Herman Li, but I think it at least speaks to their long-term goals for the platform. Additionally, while they say to never play recorded music on stream, unless from a source where the copyrights are taken care of, their specific recommendations even in this "clarification" post are very opaque. Never play recorded music on stream, unless you own all the rights, but you probably don't, if you're not sure turn off your VODs. None of that is consistent with some overarching idea of why people get DMCA'd; would I get DMCA'd for playing recorded music live, but not having VODs? I would guess even Twitch doesn't know; its outside of their control. In short, music on Twitch is REALLY risky, primarily because their rights enforcement is so immature. Its akin to them wildly shooting in the air with a machine gun. YouTube's Content ID is a bit more mature and predictable, so diversifying there may be a good idea. [1] 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...
- fortran77 6y agoEvery time I upload a video of me playing a "classical" work (Bach, Chopin, Mozart) on the piano, I get a YouTube warning and the content blocked. So far, about two dozen times, I challenge it and it comes back, but I expect someday to exceed some threshold and be gone forever. Some of the challengers are "scam" companies, but other times it's Deutsche Gramophone or Sony.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoEvidently your playing sounds too much like one of their professionals. Take it as a complement.
- dane-pgp 6y agoAlternatively, you are playing from a modern typesetting of the music which has some extra notes added to detect that you are making a derivative work through your performance, like how map makers add "trap streets" to their works. Being serious, though, I believe that a typesetting of a piece of public domain music can be eligible for copyright, but I don't believe that a performance from that typesetting can count as a derivative work of the typesetting, even if the musician faithfully performs a few "new" notes added by the typesetter.
- fortran77 6y agoThis isn't done. The well-known repertoire are scrutinized note-for-note.
- slightwinder 6y agoThis is old news and it was wrong. This happend at the height of a new wave of DMCA claims, so people simply assumed this had to be the reason. But it turned out later he showed some nudity, for which he got the usual 3 day-ban. Also, DMCA claims are not automatically leading to bans. It must have a certain level of harm ir repeated behaviour. And live-DMCA-checks are not active yet it seems, so usually the vod or clip will be deleted and the streamer get's a warning.
- wnevets 6y ago> But it turned out later he showed some nudity. Wait, the guy from dragonforce exposed his penis live on stream?
- 2StepsOutOfLine 6y agoI'm struggling to find any direct clips, but many are suggesting it was due to a fan showing their ass while he was streaming with Sabaton.
- UweSchmidt 6y agoIt seems like you overall support the system of overbearing rights holder automatically punishing and shutting down normal user behaviour, like taking a guitar and playing a song for others (i.e. the fairest of uses imaginable). What amazing power over human culture we have given to the corporations.
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- Blikkentrekker 6y agoAlso, even if he composed the music, that's no guarantee that he owns the copyright. If the copyright be transferred to the label, then his legal rights to stream it are potentially no more than that of any other person.
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- nowledge 6y agomaybe we should destroy copyright?
- josephcsible 6y agoNo, we shouldn't. Copyright is important; it just happens to be broken right now. We should fix it instead of destroying it.
- nowledge 6y agoand it worked when?
- thih9 6y ago> Twitch has not revealed any official reason for the suspension of Li’s channel That’s absurd. I mean, they have right to ban without stating reason but it’s still extremely user unfriendly.
- snarfy 6y agoDon't be mad at twitch or youtube. They are following the law as written.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y agoWe need better laws to punish false DMCA takedowns. We can’t put this on the platforms because the cost of this ignoring a true DMCA request is so high. We need to fix it so that when the engineers go to talk to the legal team, the legal team can give advice that points in a different direction, which means new laws.
- danieldrehmer 6y agoThere are so many note sequences compressed in his solos that it’s plausible that in some part of it it randomly violates someone’s IP or fully describes Pi