Foil hats off folks, it's time to bust some myths and deal some facts about Twitch's VOD censorship. This is a change that (along with the demise of JTV) has been sprung upon us at extremely short notice. This has rightly annoyed a fair few people, especially in conjunction with the slightly unclear circumstances surrounding the change. Let's try to clarify matters a little. (skip to the end for some best practice tips)
Why?
Firstly, this is designed and created solely to protect Twitch as it grows from a slew of DMCA complaints. Most have been aware of the ban on non-game music during casting already being in place. This is a continuation of this same ruling. However, when video is available on demand, it is infinitely more within the reach of DMCA notices and therefore more of a liability for Twitch and individuals.
This sucks a whole lot. However, from a business sense, it makes a whole lot of sense. Without looking at figures, it's safe to say 1000s of VODs are created every single day. Each of these are potential copyright infringements taking seconds to lodge and hours of manpower to deal with 24/7.
How?
It is pretty clear the intention is not to penalise gamers playing in-game music. This has been specifically labelled a mistake and being looked at for resolution. As of the writing of this article, it is still happening. It should be overwhelmingly clear this will go one of two ways. It will either be more finely tuned away from game music (if it was a surprise to us and not leaked as news, you can be reasonably sure the majority of game devs did not know about this) or you will need to be looking towards game devs to selectively de-protect their music on Twitch via Audible Magic.
Again, this sucks. You would hope that Twitch could have notified far enough in advance to allow for this, but that would provide significant detractors. The information would likely have been leaked, leading to a large outcry from a community who are, albeit opinionated, usually are not seeing the full picture.
Twitch are notfilling swimming pools with cash for this. In fact, they are probably shelling out a ton of money for it to be run against all past VODs (which it still is in the process of doing). However, this is admittedly costing them money to save them future expenses in man hours and potential litigation.
There are currently odd cases of false positives being flagged. The best example is probably crowd noise being picked up as a copyrighted track. This is a mistake and will be resolved. This is a brand new service being launched. Have some patience for this. Nothing is ever perfect from the get go, especially those launching at extremely short notice.
The Future
By adding this in, Twitch has put the ball firmly in license-holder's court. They have the choice whether or not to allow their music to be played. Do you think this is separate from their recent poll about live concerts and poll on the same subject? Of course not. Twitch is headed in a wider media direction and music will play a part in that. Expect a music platform in the future working alongside Twitch sharing revenue with content providers of all types and sizes. Free music for all and fair compensation for all (at least that appears to be the dream).
How To Best Deal With It
Here is your cheat sheet on how to avoid falling foul of the VOD content scanning:
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Wait. They will be adjusting this as time goes by. There will be a lot of adjustments until this 'officially' launches in 3 weeks time.
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Record locally if you plan to upload to Youtube/Vimeo/whatever later. More or less every single broadcasting app has this ability. Use it. It's usually quicker and easier than uploading via Twitch any way.
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You can contest this. If you feel you have been unfairly muted, let them know. There's no 'proper' appeals service yet, but you can appeal via [email protected]. It's a pain but you can resolve the issue if it is that major. This includes in-game music that is not otherwise licensed.
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Talk. A lot. If Youtube's system is anything to go by, identifiable content played in the background is reasonably effectively masked by constant chatter. Most content scanning systems work in 15-30 second chunks to flag. If you have chunks that large where you aren't effectively 'covering' the content, you will be flag. This is a little under-hand but if you're that desperate to play music still....
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Remember that Twitch is about live content. Live in the moment. This isn't the best news for most but it will get better. But, your focus should be on your live show. That's why we come to watch you here and not on Youtube.
- If you decide to try another service like Hitbox or Ustream, remember on Senshudo.tv you can still have a single URL to direct your users to your stream, as long as the service is one we are able to get valid API calls from. If your service does not produce these valid API calls, pester them until they do.