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Wed, 24 Mar 2021
New Year, Same You: Twitch Releases Tools To Help Creators Avoid Copyright Strikes, Can't Properly Police Abuse
Furnished content.
Readers here will remember that the last quarter of 2020 was a very, very bad time for streaming platform Twitch. It all started when the RIAA came calling on the Amazon-owned platform, issuing a slew of DMCA takedown notices over all sorts of music included in the recorded streams of creators. Instead of simply taking the content down and issuing a notice to creators, Twitch simply perma-deleted the content in question, with no recourse for a counternotice given to creators as an option. After an explosive backlash, Twitch apologized, but still didn't offer any clarity or tools for creators to understand what might be infringing content and what was being targeted. Instead, during its remote convention, Twitch only promised more information and tools in the coming months.Five months later, Twitch has finally informed its creators of the progress its made on that front: tools on the site to help creators remove material flagged as infringement and some more clarity on what is infringing.Twitch announced in an email to streamers that the site has added new tools today to help creators see where they stand with takedown requests and copyright strikes. Twitch also added tools to let streamers mass delete their recorded streams. It’s a smart move because it gives streamers better tools to play on the right side of copyright law. (If you don’t, and you rack up enough copyright strikes, you get permabanned.)Now, in the event that a streamer gets hit with a DMCA takedown request, it’ll show up in their on-site inbox; Twitch’s video producer will also show the number of copyright strikes a channel has received. In addition, streamers can now unpublish or delete all their VODs at once (or in batches of 20 at a time). It's not that Twitch's new tool is a bad thing. More clarity for creators and an increased ability to granularly address DMCA notices for their content is a decidedly good thing. But it all feels both extremely late in coming because, obviously, Twitch should have known that DMCA notices on creators from the copyright industries would be a thing.But if you're looking for encouraging signs that Twitch is getting its shit together in policing its own site, you certainly won't find it in the story of how one creator got one of his accounts banned for an account name that was "harassment via username." The user he's accused of harassing would appear to be... himself.It might be an understatement to say that popular Minecraft YouTuber and streamer George “GeorgeNotFound’’ Davidson had a weird weekend. Within two days, he got banned from Twitch, possibly un-banned, definitely banned again, and unbanned (again?). Why? “Harassment via username,” according to Twitch. Problem is, the only person he could have possibly been harassing was himself.The new, different ban email from Twitch accused him of “harassment via username” and once again informed him that the suspension was indefinite—aka, a ban. This one also further elaborated on what exactly he might have done, without telling him exactly what he definitely did. Examples included “having a username that explicitly insults another user,” “having a username that threatens negative action towards another user,” and “having a username that promotes self-harm in conjunction with malicious chat activity, such as telling another user to kill themselves.” Obviously, "ThisIsNotGeorgeNotFound" does not do any of those things. And, yet, his account was banned for a second time. He has since had the account unbanned. Which, fine, but what the hell is going on at Twitch that it never seems to get any of this right? And if the platform can't be trusted to do something as relatively simple as properly policing creators' handles, why would anyone have any confidence that it's going to navigate waters as treacherous as the Copyright Seas any better?Look, Twitch grew up fast. And nobody expects any growing platform to be perfect from the get go. But with the backing of a parent company like Amazon, it certainly should be able to do better by its creators than this.
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posted at: 12:00am on 24-Mar-2021
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