Twitch has made some changes today. Some were pretty boring. Another, however, has a lot of people very upset.
The streaming giant has implemented audio monitoring tools similar to those used by YouTube, aimed at identifying the use of copyrighted music in archived copies of user’s videos. The software will scan 30-minute sections of videos; if any unauthorised music use is detected within that block, the entire 30 minutes will be muted, even if music was only playing for ten seconds (the video itself will remain).
There’s one very important caveat, though: this only applies to video-on-demand content, not live broadcasts.
Still, people are not happy, with either the move itself or the heavy-handed way it silences content. Seems that in addition to looking for music that’s been overlaid, the software is also flagging the ambient and background music of the games people are actually playing.
Twitch just announced a policy change to maximum video retention of two weeks. They’ve got Youtube export — go get your stuff off of there!
— Jim Crawford (@mogwai_poet) August 6, 2014
Good news, everyone! We don’t have to dread YouTube purchasing Twitch! All the worst parts are already here!
— Chris Hanel (@ChrisHanel) August 6, 2014
Basically why Twitch being bought by Google is horrible. http://t.co/dTPIimddKK
— Rhéa (@ashelia) August 6, 2014
Here’s an example of Twitch’s Content ID system in action. Streamer listening to music while playing DOTA. http://t.co/8vWFSSoCa9
— Patrick Klepek (@patrickklepek) August 6, 2014
To be clear, rationale for Twitch VOD is… hearing a song during a stream is a lost sale? Is that seriously what media corporations believe?
— JP LeBreton (@vectorpoem) August 6, 2014
This guy is playing Fallout 3 with the in-game music. It’s been flagged and muted. Good job Twitch. http://t.co/OZqRZNUQEq
— Lik Chan (@LikChan) August 6, 2014
Even major games are reeling; League of Legends’ Twitter account has spent much of the afternoon sourcing alternate sources of music for users.
Do you make music you’d like to let Streamers use? Let us know using @leagueoflegends and we’ll help you spread the word.
— League of Legends (@LeagueOfLegends) August 6, 2014
The monitoring has already kicked in. And, hilariously, has already silenced archived copies of Twitch’s own programs.
If you think you’ll be affected, you can read the fine print of the announcement over on Twitch.
Comments
18 responses to “Twitch Cracks Down On Music In Videos, Users Freak Out”
Well what else can they do? Clearly hearing a streaming quality snippet of a song in the background polluted by game sound and people talking over the top of it is far better than a 320kb legally downloadable purchased version so they’re costing the industry trillions of dollars every picosecond. Scum like this ought to be lined up and shot!
Nevermind that, by hearing the song in a twitch video, they have no incentive to buy it on CD or download it to their phone!
I know that every time I twitch on the intarwebz tubez a cd in my collection dies! I hear its scream of death every time!
Imagine if someone recorded the death screams of CDs and released it as a creative work, each time you watch something on twitch you’d be robbing 2 artists of their livelihood simultaneously you monster!
This is utterly stupid (and predictable). What a shame.
Seriously?! I stopped watching gamers on Youtube because of their copyright crap and migrated to Twitch. Now Twitch is doing the same thing?!
Someone create a new streaming service which I can jump ship to =.=
and that new streaming service will get content claim policies 🙂
Either Hitbox.tv or Ustream is where I think I will be headed.
If twitch is able to find out its a song then to know if its copy righted they would also have to find out what song it is. Why not instead of muting it just put a forced overlay baloon on the video saying “like this song click here” and send them to itunes or something because clearly twich is worried about making a profit using peoples music so doing something like this would be meeting in the middle.
I understand complaints if it’s for example that guy saying about it blocking Fallout 3’s ingame audio that sort of thing is annoying.
But what right do you have to be using just a random artists song along side gameplay or whatever your video is? If you drew some art and somebody used it elsewhere without your permission you’d totally be up in arms.
If my song got free airplay in front of thousands of people I would be pretty happy, I would think of it as free endorsements.
Nobody is going to think, man that song was awesome I better bookmark 13:27 to 16:45 in that stream so I can go listen to it for free while driving in my car.
Exactly nobody is going to think that, the problem is the use of it by the streamers. The point is it’s like if i bought a dvd and played it to a large public audience, owning a copy doesn’t give me the right to do as I please.
Why? I mean legally you are right but why can’t we have real fair use as long as it isn’t “I made this Mariah Carey song” or “Here have a free Beyonce track to download”.
It directly flies in the face of fair use stipulations set down in copyright law.
So there’s that.
Welp. We said this would happen…. and it happened. Bye twitch!
“Man, and I already had carefully made a playlist by aligning videos with the songs I like and manually switching to the point in each video where they start! Yes, I’ll go to such lengths NOT to legally buy music!”
^ The way corporations believe that users think.
That takes me hours of watching archived streams of stuff I might not even be interested in and noting down the exact points where songs I like start then building a playlist linking to those points, way better than spending a buck on a song!
I don’t get it. What’s the point?
Seems like a huge waste of resources when really it just amounts to the same thing as radio play.
I think copy write lawyers need to justify their retainers so video games and Internet piracy are easy targets.
Google ruins another website! Hitbox.tv here we come!
Don’t be evil…oh wait, then we don’t pander to the needs of the music industry…