The Washington Post recently wrote about Twitch streamers’ react content and the ensuing copyright infringement from streamers like Imane “Pokimane” Anys, Hasan “HasanAbi” Piker and Jeremy “DisguisedToast” Wang.
Here is an excerpt:
This awkward and unceasing dance around the topic [of copyright infringement] has been fueled in part by the fact that Twitch is incentivized to maintain its ignorance of copyright infractions taking place on their platform.
“If Twitch knows of active infringement or is aware of facts from which knowledge of infringement is apparent, and does not act to remove or disable the material, then it could lose its safe harbor under the DMCA,” said Brandon Huffman, a founding attorney at video game- and entertainment-focused firm Odin Law and Media.
According to Ryan Fairchild, also at Odin Law and Media, it thereby behooves Twitch to behave as though it is ignorant of copyright infringement until DMCAs come its way.
“The best way for a platform to protect itself is essentially try to play as neutral as possible,” said Fairchild. “You’re a platform. You’re not the one doing the content. … Does the leadership, does the corporation actually know what’s going on? If the officers and directors know, then yeah, that’s gonna be pretty good evidence that the corporation knows. If it’s some random Twitch staff who does something that’s completely unrelated to that and wouldn’t think to pass that stuff up, maybe it’s easier to claim ignorance.”
But the silence has added stress to streamers whose livelihoods could be impacted by decisions around the current DMCA practices. And it has emphasized divides between Twitch’s stars and smaller streamers seeking to build an audience.
You can read the whole article here: Twitch streamers’ ‘TV meta’ draws television industry’s eye of Sauron
