Well that didn’t take long – soon after the supposed Twitch TV buyout by Google/Youtube, it seems like the company has sneakily and backhandedly implemented a copyright flagging system, similar to Youtube’s own ContentID system.
To be clear, this new policy is only for the audio portion of your Twitch streams, and is the result of a new partnership with Audible Magic, a company that works with the music industry to “to scan past and future [videos-on-demand] for music owned or controlled by” its clients.
This means if your video or stream infringes upon a copyright claim, the audio will be muted for a 30 minute block in which that particular song appears. This new copyright flagging system has already been affecting videos saved on the platform, including Valve’s Dota 2 – The International channel and hilariously the official Twitch channel as well.
In an effort to put out forth some damage control, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear took to Reddit last night for an impromptu AMA, in which he answered fans questions, and apologized for their blatant disregard for the fans’ own interests:
“Simply put: we screwed up and should have announced it ahead of time,” Shear wrote. “Sorry.”
According to Shear, the copyright blocking system will not be implemented to live streams, and it will only plague the VODs. It gets worse – the audio recognition technology will detect ambient music, as well as in game music – but they’re saying that original in-game music will not be flagged. Right.
“We have no intention whatsoever of bringing audio-recognition to live streams on Twitch. This is a VOD-only change for Twitch,” he wrote. “We have zero intention of flagging original in-game music.”
Shear continued to reiterate that Twitch is working towards blocking copyrighted in game music, but it’s unclear as to where the line is being drawn:
“We do intend to flag copyrighted in-game music that’s in Audible Magic’s database. (This was unclear in the blog post, my apologies). In the cases where in-game music is being flagged incorrectly, we are working on a resolution and should have one soon. False positive flags will be unmuted.”
In case your videos are flagged for copyright infringement, Twitch is offering some royalty free alternatives – but I consider this a cop-out. Also confirmed this week was the news that Twitch was dropping the option to archive past broadcasts forever, urging their users to back up their recordings within three weeks, which is the cut off date.
How do you guys feel about this? Do you think fans were done dirty? We previously reported on a Twitch TV alternative in light of the buyout, and if you use the platform, are you considering switching?
