Twitch Streamers Receive a Flood of Music Copyright Claims For Old Clips (engadget.com) 45
"It looks like Twitch streamers are the latest targets for coordinated DMCA attacks," writes Slashdot reader stikves. "What is more concerning is that these could potentially cripple their accounts." Engadget reports: The company has acknowledged (via Evening Standard) a "sudden influx" of DMCA takedown requests against streamers for allegedly violating music copyright in clips captured by viewers between 2017 and 2019. As each request potentially represents a strike against an account, this raises the threat of permanent bans for streamers who might get three strikes with relatively little warning -- and for clips they didn't even choose to create.
The Amazon-owned service is recommending that broadcasters delete any affected clips. However, it's a very slow process. You can only delete a handful at a time, and popular streamers may have thousands of clips. Twitch said it was working to "make this [process] easier," but didn't elaborate how.
The Amazon-owned service is recommending that broadcasters delete any affected clips. However, it's a very slow process. You can only delete a handful at a time, and popular streamers may have thousands of clips. Twitch said it was working to "make this [process] easier," but didn't elaborate how.
Fuck the artists, fuck the system (Score:5, Insightful)
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Defund the Copyright Police
Re: Fuck the artists, fuck the system (Score:2)
If armed officers had the ridiculous task of catching copyright violators, you would be saying that.
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It isn't the artists, it is the music companies.
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Re: Fuck the artists, fuck the system (Score:2)
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When you horribly cheaply demonize "the artists" (instead of those relevant artists) in response to this obviously narrow takedown attack perpetrated by mainstream record labels, I feel perfectly confident in denouncing your statement to a fair degree.
As an artist, I prefer that my art breathe freely. I do not leverage any takedown (unless obvious abuse is occurring), because that outcome is unhealthy for art and our community.
Copyright abuse is obviously unacceptable, but copyright (as flawed as it is, lik
Re:Fuck the artists, fuck the system (Score:4, Interesting)
While part of me agrees, most of me says this has always been the case.
Painters and similar artists would create the art and receive a one-time payment for it. A small payment, perhaps little more than the cost of supplies, maybe covering their time and a little extra. Musicians could hardly perform their work more than a few times before it would be ripped off. Storytelling was done through oral tradition, and many people were highly skilled at it.
Rich people would hoard physical artwork bought as cheaply as they could. Street performers would replicate music works they heard. Storytellers would retell stories they heard.
The original creator of the work would receive their meager payment. Art collectors would sell and trade the art among themselves for increasingly tremendous costs. Even today when artwork sells for millions among collectors, the artists doesn't see a cent; there may be an uptick in new commissions, but they are a fraction of the cost the masterpieces are selling for. Street performers and storytellers would devalue compositions to the point of nothingness, much like people copying online does today.
So while we have newer tools, the difficulty of actually paying the true content creators has always been there.
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Copyright protection to the degree we're seeing now seems to be based on the premise that someone who rights/performs a song should be entitled to become wealthy beyond comprehension for this simple act. Those who produce "creative works" ought not be remunerated at the same "minimum wage" that so many others are forced to endure.
Why is it that writing/performing some kind of music should be automatically valued to be worth a higher hourly rate than cleaning the sewers or sweeping the streets. I know wh
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Taking a picture and publishing it that happens to capture a t-shirt with a logo (or a billboard or giant golden arches for that matter) is not the same as streamers deliberately using copyrighted music in their (now thousands of) daily streams, seeking to boost their viewers and thus add revenue to their own pocket.
At best, you might fault the companies for playing the usual waiting game until after deep entrenchment and profits are taken, to only then pounce.
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Legitimate question here. How many people watching streamers actually watch because of the music they play? If people aren't watching because of the music that is being played and are watching because of the actual content being streamed is the music really all that different from the t-shirt logo? If the streamer is just playing music in the background that they like to listen too while gaming I would argue that that is analogous to the person taking a selfie wearing the t-shirt that they like that happens
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Don't worry... congress knows issues are being raised about the DMCA they are holding hearings [senate.gov] to figure out how to address the situation about improving enforcement to better enforce copyrights and how to weaken the safe harbor so that platforms and service providers will be more accountable and have greater liabilities to ensure they have to police their platforms and must prevent infringing User-Generated content rather than the current balance of sites like Twitch getting to wait on takedowns from the
Major DMCA Abuse News (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Major DMCA Abuse News (Score:2)
The lady they stole the song they used in the trailer from should use DMCA to get their trailer taken down
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I wonder, did you submit a story about it?
The horror! (Score:1, Offtopic)
could potentially cripple their accounts
A million voices cried out in terror that their need for gratification from others might come to an end.
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And posting snark to a public forum isn't also seeking gratification from others, I'm sure.
Do you not realize that for many people, streaming on Twitch is their livelihood?
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It's not a legitimate job, because it's a new line o work? Is that the point you're making? Because next you'll be telling stories about how you tied an onion to your belt, as was the fashion in the day, and we'll be putting you in a home for everyone's safety.
As the manual labor jobs are gradually replaced by robots, there will be ever more entertainment jobs. And the mega-corporations that currently have a stranglehold on tat industry do not like a future where they don't get rent on everyone who enter
Hire An Independent Composer (Score:2)
You get brand music and no copyright headache. They get a portfolio entry, recognition, and a paid gig.
Be the change you want to see in the world.
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Commissioning an original soundtrack for your show doesn't help when the game you're streaming or reviewing contains copyrighted background music.
Re:Hire An Independent Composer (Score:5, Interesting)
This. The people being targeted aren't "running their own radio station of copyrighted music", they are doing things like:
1 - "watch me play Borderlands"
2 - Borderlands opens on "No Rest for the Wicked" song by Cage the Elephant
3 - Sony, as the legal copyright holder, submits a legal DMCA request to take down the stream.
4 - Twitch is forced to comply with the legal request (streamer in question played the song, Sony holds copyright, open-and-close)
5 - Twitch streamer is kicked off platform... for streaming a game...
Change must occur (Score:3, Interesting)
Borderlands opens on "No Rest for the Wicked" song by Cage the Elephant
Then if game makers want people to see lots of people streaming games (which they very much do) game makers must use content that they grant a sub-license for any player to broadcast, or else the games they make will not be streamed.
Either make something new that is not "Cage the Elephant" or make sure you can get enough rights granted to clear using the work for streaming...
Twitch needs to work with game makers on this to make sure game
Re:Change must occur (Score:5, Informative)
if game makers want people to see lots of people streaming games (which they very much do)
Not always. Nintendo has asserted its copyright to block a league from streaming a Super Smash Bros. tournament. See "Nintendo wanted to shut down Super Smash Bros. Melee Evo event, not just stream" by Jenna Pitcher [polygon.com] and "Why Nintendo can legally shut down any Smash Bros. tournament it wants" by Kyle Orland [arstechnica.com]. And it's not just Nintendo; companies like Square Enix and Atlus have brought the copyright hammer down on streaming cut scenes or late game content as well.
Re:Hire An Independent Composer (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is saying they want to pirate music and get everything for free. A lot of YouTubers and Twitch Streamers have paid to have content produced exclusively for their channel. The sad part is that you can try to follow the rules and still end up having to walk around on eggshells because some computer algorithm picked up some background noise from your stream as copyrighted music.
Also, technically all music from every game is copyrighted, and they haven't got a right for public exhibition, so the media companies could go after them at any point. This just shows how messed up the system is. These people are basically giving free advertising to the game by showing everybody how great it is, but they still have to worry that their channel might be erased tomorrow if some copyright holder decides to get angry.
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Streaming is profitable to game companies, which is why game companies integrate pushbutton streaming now.
Re:Hire An Independent Composer (Score:4, Informative)
Fair use defence would cover this case
The problem is that fair use isn't an automatic defense. It's a defense you (or rather your lawyer) can use in court after the copyright holder sues you, and you decide to fight back, and the copyright holder says "okay, let's see who has a deeper pocket". The vast majority of people who could alegue it would be bankrupt before even reaching the point of a judge hearing it.
But then the fun continues! Even if you still have a few pennies left in your savings account bank by the point a judge hears it, they may conclude that no, it wasn't actually fair use, and you're screwed. Or they may conclude it was indeed fair use, at which point the copyright holder says they disagree and decides to continue the legal battle. The entire "let's destroy this idiot streamer as a lesson to others" show will then proceed for an entire new round at a higher, and even costlier, level.
So, unless you're very, very rich, in practice there's no such thing as a fair use defense for you. The copyright holder holds all the power, and them not using it is a mere liberality of theirs which can be altered at any point. So you'll delete the video, pay whatever generous settlement they'll demand to show how good their heart is, and that'll be it.
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If only. People have gotten copyright takedowns because the wild birds chirping in the background of a video triggered a copyright infringement detector. People have gotten takedowns because their last name was the same as a recording artist. George Harrison was involved is a long running complicated case involving 3 notes that two very different songs shared. By the end of that one, he actually owned the rights to both songs and ended up having to pay himself. The Girl scouts got sued for kids singing a so
They should have known better (Score:2)
Re:They should have known better (Score:4, Informative)
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YouTube just said you can order it pulled, or you can attach to our tit. Guess what...
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Twitch does have content detection that mutes portions of audio when watching a recorded past broadcast (not a live stream). But it's not perfect; it misses things.
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Agency (Score:4, Interesting)
and for clips they didn't even choose to create.
I feel this is written from a very skewed perspective, clips are segments of the steamer's broadcast - while they may not have created the clip, they were also broadcasting the music on their stream. Most streamers perpetually listen to music through their entire broadcasts, they had a lot of agency here.
To me when t first started to see DMCA on twitch years ago I wondered why a music streaming service (particularly Amazon itself) didn't try to create a DJ plugin where the stream could effectively create their own radio channel which subscribers of their service could tune into. It seems win-win to me, the streamer & viewers get to share in the experience of the music while the music service gets new paid subscribers (or simply adds value to the service). Heck, the streaming service could pay the streamer a referral fee for new sign-ups.
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What is supposed to have been infringed? (Score:3)
Logically, it seems absurd to argue that music in a twitch stream could violate the spirit of a copyright. It's not like anyone would be playing twitch clips in order to listen to the background music for free. I could be wrong, I've never used twitch in any way so for all I know people do use it like it was a Spotify clone or something. It doesn't seem likely though.
Blanket licenses (Score:2)
Something sim