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Sanya12364 Posts
New Twitch Audio System
In a recent blog post, Twitch announced the introduction of a system where audio in VODs will be scanned in by an automated system that will then flag the audio in those VODs for copyright violated and entire 30 minute sections will be muted.
In light of the fact that Twitch was putting in place an automated system, there was bound to be false positives, cases of fair use, and false claims. A quick search through Valve's own VODs came up with a quick hit, leading to the following tweet:
Sure enough Twitch even managed to mute its own E3 VODs under the newly installed AudioMagic system. That was bound to happen and it demonstrates all of the dangers of an automated system, especially one that enforces the punishment first and then places the onus on the alleged violator to appeal the violation.
Inducement
However, if Twitch as a streaming platform is to survive in the long run, they must make some effort to reign in copyright violation or the company becomes an easy legal target under the inducement rule of copyright protection jurisprudence. This inducement rule, a secondary violation of copyright and previously only part of patent infringement jurisprudence, found its way to copyright protection via the Supreme Court case, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Vs.Grokster.
The opinion of the court delivered by Justice Souter essentially carried the inducement test from patent law into copyright protection.
The inducement test has two parts.
- The technology must enable direct infringement.
- The technology provider “actively and knowingly aid[s] and abet[s] another’s direct infringement”.
While the language seems innocent, creating any technology that is a primary enabler of direct copyright infringement and once you are notified of widespread copyright infringement, is enough to force that company to have to do something about it.
At this point, Google has known about the potential for direct infringement of copyright with Youtube. Both inducement rule as well as widespread direct infringement is clear to the company. Base on that knowledge, if Google does nothing about Twitch VODs, then Google will certainly become legally liable.
Intellectual Property
While the quoted passage seems Orwellian
Starting today, Twitch will be implementing technology intended to help broadcasters avoid the storage of videos containing unauthorized third-party audio.
It is exactly the type of activity that Twitch must do in order to continue to provide service at all. Either this system comes in or TwitchTV disappears altogether. That is the current state of IP protection law and jurisprudence in the US and the world today, and it's just as bad in the patent law arena.
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The solution is simple.
Do not use Twitch to do your streaming. There are other platforms available, that are not run by Google, that simply do not have this kind of policy in place.
I agree that this is going to fuck over an immense number of people and previous content, but isn't this what everyone expected to happen with the acquisition of TwitchTV by Google?
Like you said, the only legal way to make Twitch work is with this system, Google simply cannot waste such an absurd amount of resources checking all channels before banning them. If people care about this enough, they need to strike, not only bitch on the internet like most do (not pointing at you, as you're raising awareness), and go against these laws, or maybe more preferably, simply move to another country where issues like these don't arise nearly as frequently. Personally doesn't effect me, but yeah, don't like the direction.
Imo this is worthy of a thread in general, I'm sure everyone is going to go crazy over this, but dunno if it's better to keep in the Google buys Twitch for 1,000,000,000 thread right here: http://www.liquiddota.com/forum/general/450721-youtube-to-acquire-twitch-for-1bn
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Question maybe someone here can answer: if you play an internet radio station or a radio station in general for music on your stream is that still infringement?
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Very nice summary post. Obviously Twitch has certain advantages over smaller live streaming sites, namely, reliability under huge server load for TI, ESL, Summit, etc...
Does the audio muting hurt streamers terribly? I've just personally never watched much old-content. Almost everything I view is live, not recordings. If this hurts ad revenue significantly then there would be motivation for the streamer to change services. But they'd be giving up the viewers that come from Twitch.com, rather than those who view through sites like here. I'm not sure what those numbers are, so changing might be too much of a sacrifice, especially for streamers who don't have the dedicated subs to pull numbers to another hosting site.
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On August 18 2014 11:56 giftdgecko wrote:
Question maybe someone here can answer: if you play an internet radio station or a radio station in general for music on your stream is that still infringement?
Yes it is.
But much like if you open up a lemonade stand, and make $10, nobody is going to try to track you down to tax you on your capital gains, and how you don't have to put selling an old car on kijiji in your taxes.
However whenever and whoever you are, technically you have to pay rights to what you use. DJ's have to, radio stations have to, every big company that uses any music has to. Most smaller artists prefer to make their music free to use in order to gain popularity, but once they reach a certain point, royalties for their music is what they'll require.
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@gecko - I'd imagine it falls under something to a restreaming situation. Just because you have permission yourself to view content doesn't mean you can extend that permission to your viewers publicly. That said, I can't imagine what the case would be for cases where the radio is... actually a radio, and there's no signup process or user identification / interaction.
@sabreace it depends on the kind of content the viewers are producing, but I'd say a majority of the time a muted vod would be a huge deal. The most obvious and notable examples, to me, are tournament replays where the actual commentary may end up muted, or let's plays / playthroughs / speedruns, where often the commentary during the run is a significant portion of its entertainment value. Obviously this could be avoided by content producers by not invoking the wrath of audiomagic, but then again for certain games that isn't possible, and inevitable false positives are something of a headache.
And this thread is a refreshing dose of actual information, rather than painting twitch as villains in a corporate apocalypse. I don't think "ABANDON TWITCH" is the correct reaction to this "situation", as nothing they're doing is wholly unreasonable, and it's all stuff that any other streaming service will run in to once they become big enough to chase down for it. If we as an audience are significant enough in number to merit pursuing for legal action, then the legal action is going to chase us whether we go to hitbox or whichever new promising streaming service shows up.
I just hope we don't end up with region-locked streams, because that'd force me to go through an american proxy, and that sounds moderately inconvenient 
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On August 18 2014 12:38 Fleetfeet wrote:@gecko - I'd imagine it falls under something to a restreaming situation. Just because you have permission yourself to view content doesn't mean you can extend that permission to your viewers publicly. That said, I can't imagine what the case would be for cases where the radio is... actually a radio, and there's no signup process or user identification / interaction. @sabreace it depends on the kind of content the viewers are producing, but I'd say a majority of the time a muted vod would be a huge deal. The most obvious and notable examples, to me, are tournament replays where the actual commentary may end up muted, or let's plays / playthroughs / speedruns, where often the commentary during the run is a significant portion of its entertainment value. Obviously this could be avoided by content producers by not invoking the wrath of audiomagic, but then again for certain games that isn't possible, and inevitable false positives are something of a headache. And this thread is a refreshing dose of actual information, rather than painting twitch as villains in a corporate apocalypse. I don't think "ABANDON TWITCH" is the correct reaction to this "situation", as nothing they're doing is wholly unreasonable, and it's all stuff that any other streaming service will run in to once they become big enough to chase down for it. If we as an audience are significant enough in number to merit pursuing for legal action, then the legal action is going to chase us whether we go to hitbox or whichever new promising streaming service shows up. I just hope we don't end up with region-locked streams, because that'd force me to go through an american proxy, and that sounds moderately inconvenient
I agree it's not unreasonable, but the way a lot of people on the internet function, is once one illegal site goes down, they simply go to another, until that one is shut down, so on and so forth. Just like if you couldn't watch Game of Thrones online anywhere for free, I'm sure a lot of people would be pissed, even though it's not unreasonable according to the law.
If I want to play my Grooveshark playlist with a reasonable number of popular songs while I stream SC2/Dota, and am not big enough to be making significant money on ad revenue, I wouldn't stream on twitch so I don't have to go through that issue.
I mean obviously it makes sense, imagine someone recorded them doing nothing but playing a song, and then people could simply download all those songs for free. I mean I think it's stupid as it is, what exactly are you achieving my muting those videos on Twitch? Any idiot on the internet can go to a youtube to mp3 converter website, and download any song in existence (well any that exists on youtube) in about 15-30 seconds. Just a stupid policy, not much we can do, but it is rather frustrating and achieves what? How much money do you think they're making for the music industry by doing this? I'd argue that it's a negative amount.
edit: Actually I think it'd be much more reasonable if they handled it on a case by case basis, in where if anyone has over 10k viewers and streaming music, then they check it. Simply banning channels that get 5 viewers is silly, and the potential for accidentals bans and all the trouble with that will be much greater than whatever the music industry could achieve by someone streaming a song to 5 people.
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On August 18 2014 12:53 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2014 12:38 Fleetfeet wrote:@gecko - I'd imagine it falls under something to a restreaming situation. Just because you have permission yourself to view content doesn't mean you can extend that permission to your viewers publicly. That said, I can't imagine what the case would be for cases where the radio is... actually a radio, and there's no signup process or user identification / interaction. @sabreace it depends on the kind of content the viewers are producing, but I'd say a majority of the time a muted vod would be a huge deal. The most obvious and notable examples, to me, are tournament replays where the actual commentary may end up muted, or let's plays / playthroughs / speedruns, where often the commentary during the run is a significant portion of its entertainment value. Obviously this could be avoided by content producers by not invoking the wrath of audiomagic, but then again for certain games that isn't possible, and inevitable false positives are something of a headache. And this thread is a refreshing dose of actual information, rather than painting twitch as villains in a corporate apocalypse. I don't think "ABANDON TWITCH" is the correct reaction to this "situation", as nothing they're doing is wholly unreasonable, and it's all stuff that any other streaming service will run in to once they become big enough to chase down for it. If we as an audience are significant enough in number to merit pursuing for legal action, then the legal action is going to chase us whether we go to hitbox or whichever new promising streaming service shows up. I just hope we don't end up with region-locked streams, because that'd force me to go through an american proxy, and that sounds moderately inconvenient I agree it's not unreasonable, but the way a lot of people on the internet function, is once one illegal site goes down, they simply go to another, until that one is shut down, so on and so forth. Just like if you couldn't watch Game of Thrones online anywhere for free, I'm sure a lot of people would be pissed, even though it's not unreasonable according to the law. If I want to play my Grooveshark playlist with a reasonable number of popular songs while I stream SC2/Dota, and am not big enough to be making significant money on ad revenue, I wouldn't stream on twitch so I don't have to go through that issue. I mean obviously it makes sense, imagine someone recorded them doing nothing but playing a song, and then people could simply download all those songs for free. I mean I think it's stupid as it is, what exactly are you achieving my muting those videos on Twitch? Any idiot on the internet can go to a youtube to mp3 converter website, and download any song in existence (well any that exists on youtube) in about 15-30 seconds. Just a stupid policy, not much we can do, but it is rather frustrating and achieves what? How much money do you think they're making for the music industry by doing this? I'd argue that it's a negative amount. edit: Actually I think it'd be much more reasonable if they handled it on a case by case basis, in where if anyone has over 10k viewers and streaming music, then they check it. Simply banning channels that get 5 viewers is silly, and the potential for accidentals bans and all the trouble with that will be much greater than whatever the music industry could achieve by someone streaming a song to 5 people.
I -thiiink- you're misunderstanding the issue, or I am. This goes one of two ways: Either they ARE muting live streams and DO intend to mute live streams to prevent people from sharing music...
OR
They have no intention of taking action on live streams, and are only looking to prevent having free, available recordings of songs that they don't have rights to by muting the VODs that would be infringing (hosted on their own site where they're legally liable for the infringement).
Personally, I believe the latter to be true (SEE http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/c/4860387) If that's the case, nothing is stopping you from playing music as part of your stream... and in cases where the audio will be important / you expect to get some viewership via VODs then you've still got the option of NOT playing music, or simply recording your stream locally and uploading it to youtube later which has a better system for dealing with copyrighted music than "Well, we're just gonna mute your shit"
In that event, your case for your VODs on your 5 viewer stream are irrelevant because your viewers received from vods is basically nonexistent (Or you're using the wrong program in twitch for what you're trying to do) and those with 2k+ viewers that actually have cause to complain about their vods being muted have an avenue to appeal the muting, or can be more careful about what they've got in their streams/vods.
TLDR according to linked interview they don't intend to mute anything but vods and don't intend to ban users based on how much music they play.
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Twitch is going to get away with this and they are not going to see significant losses over this. Nobody cares enough to stop using it over this change. It sucks but apparently protecting the IP of artists is better than getting their art circulating, so if they want to shoot themselves in the foot over this then they can be my guest.
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Thanks for this post.
Dunno why people are so mad about this whole issue, It was kinda bound to happen as Twitch grew bigger and bigger, Google acquisition or not. If anything, people should direct their hate towards IP laws/Music industry lobbies, which are the real issue in this thing.
Getting mad at twitch/google and switching to another streaming platform won't solve anything, it will just delay the inevitable. The new streaming platform will grow and will have to implement DMCA stuff too. ggwp
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I think this only matters if your getting views on VODs. Most streamers do not "need" the VODs, only stuff that's affected is Tournaments mostly.
I would say if you dont care about the VODs, just go ahead and continue using your Grooveshark playlist while streaming, as long as you disable the record video option.
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On August 18 2014 12:04 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2014 11:56 giftdgecko wrote:
Question maybe someone here can answer: if you play an internet radio station or a radio station in general for music on your stream is that still infringement? Yes it is. But much like if you open up a lemonade stand, and make $10, nobody is going to try to track you down to tax you on your capital gains, and how you don't have to put selling an old car on kijiji in your taxes. However whenever and whoever you are, technically you have to pay rights to what you use. DJ's have to, radio stations have to, every big company that uses any music has to. Most smaller artists prefer to make their music free to use in order to gain popularity, but once they reach a certain point, royalties for their music is what they'll require.
The last part isn't at all true. Most famous musicians make the lions share of their money from live performances and not royalties. Record companies make far more money from royalties than the artists, they are the ones driving this. Very few artists have a good enough deal with their label to live solely off royalties, these days very few artists even write their own music and even less own the rights to their own songs.
As a professional song writer I can tell you that royalties don't add up to much unless your song is being played on the radio hundreds of times per hour, which unless you are The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Bon Jovi or the like, simply doesn't happen. You playing music on your stream isn't losing anyone any money except perhaps the record labels and even then its negligible, they make it out to be a much worse problem than it is, just like they did when torrenting and limewire etc became a thing. People were always pirating music, whether by recording off the radio or from a friend or buying bootleg copies... it was always there and it wasn't ever a real problem for anyone except the record labels.
Most artists want you to buy their album, that makes them a decent cut of money and they want their song played on the radio as much as possible to help boost live performance and single/album sales. If they write their own songs, they also get a cut, usually a very small one, of the royalties paid by the radio station. By playing music on your stream you are actually doing the artists a big favour, you are exposing their music to new consumers who might then go on itunes et al and buy it where as if they had not heard it on your stream they wouldn't have.
If your stream is about gaming, the music isn't the focus, its just the background, no one is listening to your stream because of the music, you aren't costing anyone any money at all and shouldn't fall under copyright laws. If the music is the focus of your stream, then of course you should.
One of my oldest friends is in the dance group Rudimental, his name is Tom Jules Stock, he joined them last year after they booted their original singer. He, like myself has been banging away in the music industry for nearly two decades and has finally hit the big time, I asked him how he felt about people using their music on streams and he said echoed my earlier statement that artists are fine with people using their music in so long as they aren't deliberately using it to make money.
Frankly I wish that the people who wrote our laws weren't in the pockets of multi-national corporations who have ripped apart fair-use and shit on their artists wishes just to try and keep making more money.
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On August 18 2014 11:43 FiWiFaKi wrote:
The solution is simple.
Do not use Twitch to do your streaming. There are other platforms available, that are not run by Google, that simply do not have this kind of policy in place.
There aren't really any viable options
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Northern Ireland22208 Posts
Let's say there's a mass exodus to another streaming platform. Do you not think the same will happen when they start getting big?
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On August 19 2014 01:48 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2014 12:04 FiWiFaKi wrote:On August 18 2014 11:56 giftdgecko wrote:
Question maybe someone here can answer: if you play an internet radio station or a radio station in general for music on your stream is that still infringement? Yes it is. But much like if you open up a lemonade stand, and make $10, nobody is going to try to track you down to tax you on your capital gains, and how you don't have to put selling an old car on kijiji in your taxes. However whenever and whoever you are, technically you have to pay rights to what you use. DJ's have to, radio stations have to, every big company that uses any music has to. Most smaller artists prefer to make their music free to use in order to gain popularity, but once they reach a certain point, royalties for their music is what they'll require. The last part isn't at all true. Most famous musicians make the lions share of their money from live performances and not royalties. Record companies make far more money from royalties than the artists, they are the ones driving this. Very few artists have a good enough deal with their label to live solely off royalties, these days very few artists even write their own music and even less own the rights to their own songs. As a professional song writer I can tell you that royalties don't add up to much unless your song is being played on the radio hundreds of times per hour, which unless you are The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Foo Fighters, Bon Jovi or the like, simply doesn't happen. You playing music on your stream isn't losing anyone any money except perhaps the record labels and even then its negligible, they make it out to be a much worse problem than it is, just like they did when torrenting and limewire etc became a thing. People were always pirating music, whether by recording off the radio or from a friend or buying bootleg copies... it was always there and it wasn't ever a real problem for anyone except the record labels. Most artists want you to buy their album, that makes them a decent cut of money and they want their song played on the radio as much as possible to help boost live performance and single/album sales. If they write their own songs, they also get a cut, usually a very small one, of the royalties paid by the radio station. By playing music on your stream you are actually doing the artists a big favour, you are exposing their music to new consumers who might then go on itunes et al and buy it where as if they had not heard it on your stream they wouldn't have. If your stream is about gaming, the music isn't the focus, its just the background, no one is listening to your stream because of the music, you aren't costing anyone any money at all and shouldn't fall under copyright laws. If the music is the focus of your stream, then of course you should. One of my oldest friends is in the dance group Rudimental, his name is Tom Jules Stock, he joined them last year after they booted their original singer. He, like myself has been banging away in the music industry for nearly two decades and has finally hit the big time, I asked him how he felt about people using their music on streams and he said echoed my earlier statement that artists are fine with people using their music in so long as they aren't deliberately using it to make money. Frankly I wish that the people who wrote our laws weren't in the pockets of multi-national corporations who have ripped apart fair-use and shit on their artists wishes just to try and keep making more money.
Sorry, maybe I wasn't exactly clear with how I worded everything, but I actually agree with you.
I think muting these songs will almost always do more harm than good, because singers like you said would like the exposure, it isn't the primary focus, etc. So I agree with your post in that regard, however when I referred to "musician" I was rather thinking of the recording label and their affiliates as one entity, and simply included singers, writers, recording labels as one, my apologies.
All I was trying to get at, is that there is a way for TwitchTV streamers to attract more viewers by playing potential songs in certain circumstances, even regardless of whether the singer wants it or not, the artist/band and affiliates in general have shown to not allow music to play for free when there is some money they could receive from royalty fees due to their music being demanded.
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On August 19 2014 03:30 Yoshi- wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2014 11:43 FiWiFaKi wrote:
The solution is simple.
Do not use Twitch to do your streaming. There are other platforms available, that are not run by Google, that simply do not have this kind of policy in place.
There aren't really any viable options
So we are saying that the live streaming market is a natural monopoly then, or an artificial monopoly? If it's an artificial monopoly, they can be sued for anti-competition laws in USA and Canada (and likely other European countries as they'll have similar laws).
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The solution is to go back and time, watch Twitch before Google owned it, and weep softly thinking about the future
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On August 19 2014 04:20 FiWiFaKi wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2014 03:30 Yoshi- wrote:On August 18 2014 11:43 FiWiFaKi wrote:
The solution is simple.
Do not use Twitch to do your streaming. There are other platforms available, that are not run by Google, that simply do not have this kind of policy in place.
There aren't really any viable options So we are saying that the live streaming market is a natural monopoly then, or an artificial monopoly? If it's an artificial monopoly, they can be sued for anti-competition laws in USA and Canada (and likely other European countries as they'll have similar laws).
This isn't a twitch are being nazi, let's go somewhere else problem. Any platform the collective gaming community left to use, would encounter this same exact problem that Twitch is going through. Don't get mad at twitch, get mad at our lawmakers for having antiquated copyright laws.
It's also so ridiculous, I can barely take it seriously. If I wanted to 'rip' music for free, twitch vods would be just about the worst fucking method on this planet earth, there is no reason stream vods should be included in these fair use debates, but because of the antiquated, moronic laws, stream vods are caught-up in the bullshit.
We shouldn't be telling people to 'go sign up for X stream service instead', we should be telling everyone to write their local congressmen. Stickin' it to twitch by changing platforms does exactly nothing to rectify the 'real' problem.
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Sanya12364 Posts
Antiquated it is not. The "inducement rule" was a recent innovation (2005) where TwitchTV would be liable no matter what. Even if TwitchTV should argue that its users were the ones owning the content, doing the direct infringement, the "inducement rule" applies since TwitchTV would be "actively abetting" infringement by providing the platform and hosting the VODs.
What it is is regressive and serving to the powers of record companies (RIAA) and studios like MGM.
I don't think we'll get audio filtering on live content. VOD filtering exists because a third party can do the VOD filtering and prove that Twitch is party to copyright infringement. Live content filtering would only become mandatory if copyright holders can prove that filtering is fast enough and viable for twitch. It is probably too slow with present technology, and Twitch can always claim that it's unfeasible.
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Everything comes down to this:
Record labels want more money and they say they lose billions while in fact they gain money from exposure.
They need to adress Record labels and force them to squeeze the artists less, and let them have more say in what their songs can/cannot be used for.
as it stands, the labels itself can just extort big companies in doing their bidding because of "IP"
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