First off Twitch, you are very wrong if you think that I or many other affiliate streamers who receive zero exposure from your algorithms are worried about DMCA. Maybe the big streamers are more easily influenced by their contractual obligations, but not the rest of the community who make no profit or gain by streaming on your platform.

Secondly, let's start off with a little about the music industry and licensing itself. As a founder and operator of an online radio station, I have paid alone in licensing/royalties over 8 years close to $10,000. I am a firm believer that musicians and songwriters should be paid. Sadly enough, only a very tiny percentage of that money paid in to licensing gets to the songwriters and musicians. Ask any musician in Nashville trying to break into the industry and they will tell you they make less than $2/month. Why is licensing a radio station important? If you are using someone else's music for a profit or gain, it's very important to have a license and pay royalties. The more profit you make, the more royalties you pay. This is how to avoid copyright infringement and to be fair. I'm stating some of the obvious here for a reason. The Twitch Streaming platform is a bit different from a radio station. The platform is not a radio station itself. The content on Twitch varies majorly, from artwork to gaming, to IRL Chat, to DJs playing music. Your email had an interesting bit of information that over 99% of the notifications were for music in the background playing. Why is that? This should be a clear indicator while there are some streamers that play music/DJ/compose as part of their stream, most streamers do not focus on music as the centerpiece of their streams for profit hence 99% "in the background". When you watch streams and see subs and donations, the comments associated with the subs and donations say it all. They go to the streamer for THEIR time and content, whether it be painting pictures, playing their viewers favorite game, etc. The background music has no relevance in their success and profitability. The whole point of DMCA was to combat copyright infringement, the process of taking someone else's work and using it for profit or gain. Why are YOU TWITCH worried about DMCA? Do you think we are dumb to believe that "you were surprised" that this sudden increase in May had anything to do with Covid and the move from real world to virtual and increase in streaming?

Third, while other platforms saw a significant increase during Covid-19, your viewership while having a short incline is now falling for most streamers. You've lost streamers to other platforms. Don't think we streamers and viewers did not see this. Your platform is simply becoming less beneficial to most people whether streamers or viewers. Your insistent forcing of commercials by spending time, money, and resources to thwart viewers ad-blocking technology is driving your viewers away but you don't even bother to stop the constant harassing of bots in our chatrooms begging us to buy follows for our channels. When the viewers go away, so does the revenue for the bigger streamers. The bigger streamers then move to another platform. You also consistently ban hard working streamers with double standards in your rules, allowing other streamers who break the same rules a 2nd, a 3rd, and a 5th chance. You appoint a board with members who have serious mental issues. So again, tell me why you think we are worrying again?

You may want to rethink your strategy and work hard to secure an agreement with the labels and entities filing DMCA takedowns to lay off the 99% of the streamers not profiting from music in their streams, or there will be legal action against the PROs and entities who only pay a majority of starving musicians less than $2/month in the billions of dollars royalties they [record labels and any other entity filing DMCA takedowns] collect. Don't believe me?? Ask any starving musician in Nashville.

Twitch, you better figure out which side of the fence you want to be on because this is going to end badly for someone, and it won't be the streamers. That's not an idea. That's a promise.

[Edit: "they" = the record labels and organizations filing the DMCA takedowns]

Most game's have licensed music like RDR2 or other games that have music imbedded in at the start middle or otherwise in the game, being muted or getting a strike or muted because of in-game music is a bit wrong when it's outta the streamers hand's no matter how much we minimize thing's like that do happen!! Take a step back for a bit and make sure it's worth a copy right strike!! Those of us that stream the game with no music except for what we can't help during the game shouldn't have to worry about being banned or getting a strike!! We do not intend to break the law's or rules we just play the game and have fun and enjoy chat!!

Not so much an idea, but I and dozens of my DJ friends only signed up with Twitch, because we're all out of work from the pandemic, and livestreaming DJ sets was our only outlet at this time. We don't even really make any profit, short of a few bucks from donations. This is mainly for therapy.

And most of the DJ's I know, don't even play mainstream/top 40 music in our sets. Is there any other legal options, besides doing private Zoom parties, or signing up for a premium Mixcloud account for us? I've been doing a weekly Sunday stream of obscure 80's Japanese music, and I've never had any kind of warning emails. This is all news to me.

With the vast diversity of streamers ranging from young to old, professional to casual, Twitch needs to assign an expert to review the various EULAs for the games streaming on Twitch. This would provide more efficient, consistent, and helpful EULA interpretation, and it would enable mechanisms for Twitch and game companies to resolve problems with EULAs and potential DMCA issues quickly and efficiently.

Twitch should have one point person (or small team) review legal documents such as EULAs and identify key points relevant to streamers. They should then communicate those points to streamers and build additional relevant safeguards into Twitch (such as having a pop-up warning to streamers identifying potential DMCA problems when streaming a particular game, or building in other safeguards).

In addition, when the Twitch DMCA expert identifies problematic language in particular EULAs, Twitch can then reach out to these companies to try to resolve problems behind the scenes rather than expecting or relying on individual streamers to take that responsibility.

Context: In the DMCA email today from Twitch, "Music-Related Copyright Claims and Twitch" (2020-11-11), Twitch suggested the following:

"[W]e recommend you review their End User License Agreements (that wall of text at the beginning of a game) to see how the terms cover streaming with that music. One way to do this is to search for a game’s official EULA online and then do a ctrl+f (Command+f on Mac) search for words like “stream,” “licensed,” and “music” to point you toward the correct sections. If you’re unsure about the rights, some games allow you to turn off music when streaming, or you can mute the game audio yourself. If neither of those apply, consider turning off VODs and Clips."

To ask each end user to review the "wall of text" and expect consistent and accurate interpretations from all streamers seems a bit ridiculous.

Twitch: Stand up for your content creators. Use the power of your corporation to do the right thing; don't rely on individual streamers to get it right.

Currently, it is hopelessly impractical for streamers to do what they do best, entertain with back ground music filling the silence between moments when they game or interact, while the danger of blanket copyright strikes resulting in forced stream and VOD censoring exists. If twitch wants this to work effectively, they have to fight for it. This could mean hiring legal experts, and/or lobbyists to work to implement something similar to the Fair Use Act under US law in the long term, but in the mean time I've prepared a suggestion or two that should help the situation if implemented.

Currently, the way the copyright issue works prevents any use whatsoever of music or content whose copyright is owned by someone else, and its use is often contested by automation, not by direct interaction, this is inadequate for protecting livestreamers, as it often results in mass automated over-reactions of the algorithms which twitch and copyright owners rely on to police the use of their content, as these algorithms are not fully capable of analyzing the contextual elements of each individual instance of alleged copyright infringement, simply put, the algorithms not smart enough, and it never can be, because its not a person.

Here is how you solve this problem. The automated system of copyright claiming must be removed and replaced with good old fashioned manpower, forcing copyright owners to MANUALLY issue copyright complaints which must be MANUALLY reviewed by twitch staff/moderators, in order to do away with algorithm censoring. This would mean hiring/tasking staff who can objectively and contextually review streamer content on a ticket by ticket basis to determine whether or not the copyrighted content is being used by the streamer in a manner, that fits the exact legal terminology of copyright law.

An expedient and effective means of contesting copyright claims must also be implemented for streamers to make use of. While copyright owners may lose money in the meantime, assuming their claims of infringement are well founded, streamers and smaller content creators often cannot afford the required downtime needed to contest or appeal a claim of this nature through the currently available methods.

Twitch is a service provider, as such, twitch should be the first one to go to bat for people making use of their service, it shouldn't be censoring their content first and asking questions of context later, this may be more expedient on twitch's end, but it can be the difference between success and failure in the streaming world on a content creator's end. Put simply, twitch has resources, most streamers don't, so don't pass the buck, step up, and do the work, so streamers can keep making you money.

This particular issue is not something that can be automated, not in the complaint filing, or processing aspects, without severely hampering streamers ability to create content. To fix this problem, you must put butts in the seats, and do the work the hard way. It will be thankless, and god awfully difficult, but your community will love you for it.

Facebook Gaming made it so that it is possible for all creators to use all music in their broadcasts without worry of any sort of DMCA backlash. Facebook, being one of the biggest social media sites, and now acquiring Oculus, is still significantly smaller than Twitch/Amazon. If they are able to get something worked out to make it so that DMCA isn't a worry anymore, then I imagine Twitch/Amazon can as well.

Points to bring up:

• As long as the music is not the main source of the content, and is just heard in the background, then it is helping to promote the song, and in return, the studio producing the song.


• If music is the main focus of the stream, (example being Beat Saber, Guitar Hero, etc.) then the VoD is automatically muted, and clips automatically removed if there is DMCA protected music in them.


• If there is a DMCA strike given for whatever reason, allow for the strikes to be discussed, and allow us, as the content creators, a means to explain the point of the music. If no common ground can be made, an automatic removal of the clip/VoD should be done, and a strike lasting 30 days given.


• If a strike is to be given, allow for the content creator to discuss with the DMCA people to appeal and remove the strike before 30 days.


• At 3 strikes, the channel is suspended for 7 days. At 5 strikes (or second time hitting 3 strikes in a single fiscal year), a 30 day suspension. At 7 strikes (or third time hitting 3 strikes in a single fiscal year), a ban on the channel entirely.

I feel like this should have been a given from the start, but apparently not.

WHEN YOU SEND OUT THE INFRINGEMENT NOTIFICATIONS TWITCH, PROVIDE MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE INFRINGEMENT.

Don't just give us "information about the allegedly infringed work, who the claimant is, how the claimant can be contacted, and possible penalties under our repeat infringer policy", give us NOT ONLY names and links to affected clips and VODs, but also TIMESTAMPS FOR EACH INFRINGEMENT.

This information would provide users with a better ability to not only find the content that was allegedly infringed upon, but would allow users to dispute incorrect claims more efficiently because we all know that robots, while correct some portion of the time, are not perfect, and people will take advantage of any inconsistencies they can find within the system to create false claims for streamers they may not like.

I was wondering if the policy of parody lyrics could be clarified. Most of your policy says as long as a good attempt is made to match the lyrics.

However some comedy channels might want to use parody lyrics improvising a parody acapella on the spot.

we're not using a recording of the song but we are singing in the cadence and notage of the copyrighted song but we're singing alternate lyrics.

Like for example I noted that the Billy Ocean song Love Zone happened to come out at the same time that we discovered The warp zone in Super Mario Bros that naturally led to the 4 lines of a parody. If there was social media back in that time that would have been funny.

I'm not a professional YouTuber but I got a dmca notice for friends wedding playing I will always love you at the actual wedding.

I think the owners of that song got so many requests to do that and so many backlash against it that they decided to do ads for songs were they placed an ad on the video that's clickable in return for letting the video played the song.

I was considering giving everyone a 5 second theme song to my regular listeners. Since the music is copyrighted I've since held back. maybe ads for songs would be a good universal default program for short usage where the music is not the main attraction to the show.