Twitch’s online landscape has been incredibly chaotic over the past several months thanks to a handful of factors. The most pressing of those factors is undoubtedly the onslaught ofDMCA takedowns that forced streamers to scrambleand, in most cases, delete entire catalogues of clips and VODS.
Up until this point, Twitch has seemingly done little to ease many creators building concern over the ever-growing wave of DMCA takedowns. Now,Twitchhas released a lengthy statement addressing the concerns of many community members, as well as how the platform will move forward from here.
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The recent influx of DMCA claims and waves ofbans affecting numerous Twitch streamersover the past few months has made streaming on Twitch quite the challenge. Creators big and small have been affected by these issues, making Twitch’s silence that much more frustrating. Thankfully, Twitch has released quite a lengthy and in-depth blog post going over the recent issues that creators have had with the platform, mainly surrounding the flood of DMCA takedown notices.
Twitch opens up the post confirming that it’s heard creators frustrations and grievances, agreeing that this issue should have been handled much better than it was. The post then takes time to break down what exactly DMCA is, Twitch’s DMCA guidelines, and how DMCA affects streamers. After that, the post dives into the recent flood ofDMCA notification emails that streamers received, which failed to give proper indication of what exactly violated Twitch’s guidelines. Twitch explains that its staff was just as surprised as streamers were when the wave of claims hit, explaining that “representatives for the major record labels started sending thousands of DMCA notifications each week that targeted creators' archives.”
This far exceeded the amount of claims that Twitch had dealt with in the past, resulting in what unfolded over the past several months, according to the blog post. While Twitch apologized for the feelings of frustration created by the situation and promises to take steps to help creators deal with these claims, the post does not make it sound like the severity of the DMCA situation will let up. Twitch further goes on to address how streamers can avoid DMCA takedowns going forward, such as avoiding playing music they don’t own the rights to orturning off game musicthat could end up getting claimed.
Twitch also addresses the steps and tools it will be implementing in the future to help streamers avoid DMCA claims, such as adding the ability to actually review clips that have been claimed and control what audio shows up in recorded content. The post ends claiming there will be transparency going forward and that Twitch has started drafting an FAQ about the situation. However, the recent situation involvingTwitch punishing people using Ad-Blockersbehind the scenes doesn’t exactly help the statement surrounding transparency. Hopefully,Twitchfollows through with these necessary tools for streamers in the near future.
