Edit: Valve has made a post addressing the DMCA issue.
Recently, as we’re preparing to get into the swing of a bunch of great tournaments, there has been a lot of discussion happening around who is allowed to broadcast professional Dota 2 matches. While there is a tendency to oversimplify issues like these, often times it takes a fair amount of effort to work through what the right outcome is for the community as a whole.
With any change to any of our products we tend to start with a framing question of “What is best for our customers”. This means all customers, not just the ones who care about professional play, but also those who ardently follow specific streamers, along with tournament operators and their sponsors. Generally we tend to try to tread pretty lightly around areas where the community outside of Valve is doing a lot of the work, primarily because we don’t want to stifle invention that leads to someone doing something really cool that we hadn’t thought of. The community has built many beneficial things for itself — websites like Dotabuff, contributions to the Steam workshop, independent broadcast studios, sites like DatDota, streamers with unique communities of fans – and because of that we think that the community should have broad license in terms of what is allowed.
Hopefully that background is useful when considering the specific issue of who should be broadcasting Dota 2 matches.
Broadly speaking, we see two groups of fans (with some degree of overlap). Some fans follow competitive play – they have favorite teams, players, casters, tournaments — and want to consume content directly from tournament organizers who are producing events. Other fans have strong affinities to specific personalities, and they watch them play games, talk about games, and cast a variety of professional, amateur, and pub games. We want to make sure that there is content available that serves both groups of customers.
To that end, in addition to the official, fully-produced streams from the tournament organizer itself, we believe that anyone should be able to broadcast a match from DotaTV for their audience. However, we don’t think they should do so in a commercial manner or in a way that directly competes with the tournament organizer’s stream. This means no advertising/branding overlays, and no sponsorships. It also means not using any of the official broadcast’s content such as caster audio, camerawork, overlays, interstitial content, and so on. Finally, this is not permission for studios to broadcast each other’s events. In general, everyone should play nice together, and we think the boundaries should be pretty clear.
The statement from Valve makes it clear that they support anyone who wishes to stream tournament games from DotaTV but find issue with anyone making money from advertisement / overlay's / sponsorship's while doing it. However Valve also seems to leave it up to the individual tournament organizers and streamers themselves to sort out exactly when it is acceptable and when it crosses the line.
No one really seems sure what is going on and trying to coordinate information on reddit is a giant mess. Just gathering all the pertinent information into an easily readable post here.
Original Post from FroggedTV : Hello, I am currently working with FroggedTV : www.twitch.tv/froggedTV. The main and only casting channel for French content. We are currently got banned from watching the Starladder in the In-game client. We got a DMCA Ban, that's means Starladder decided to ban us. That point makes us wonder for the future of the French broadcast of Events in DotA2 ? There is 3 options : *1 - Broadcasting on Tournament_channel_FR against payoff/revenues, if you cast 14hours for someone else you need to get reward. (not only Twitch CPM revenues, because in France we have close to zero ads revenues) *2 - Pay the broadcast right, however if you compare the price that might be asked against french revenues that is almost impossible to buy it. *3 - Using the old system by using Dota2TV In-Game system, and promote the tournament & sponsor to the French Audience on our channel. We always thought DotaTV was free to use and to cast. I remember seeing those news from Valve stating it and this is the first time we got a DMCA Ban over using DotaTV. We are in a complete grey area and we really need Valve to get out of it. This is our passion and if we can't cast any future tournament we would really like to know it now ! If Anyone from Valve or the community can help us to answer to it that will help us a lot because that might be the end of French broadcast in competitive Dota2 with the Minor/major system. The French community is growing but we are not bigger enough to be considered as main language. For Everyone who are wondering what we have done since 2012. Some productions we did for last months/year : TI7FR : TI7FR Insider : We build a studio in a house with 20 people for the complete TI7 duration and be able to reach 2000 to 5000 viewers on twitch. (That is a lot for French DotA2)
There was a moonduck podcast recently where Sunsfan and a few others were convinced it had changed, other personalities disagreed and moonduck has changed their stance :
Trentpax Before that podcast I checked with several people who were convinced that there was now a precedence to stop people from streaming DotaTV tournaments. Since that podcast I have been enlightened by other people who have said that is not the case and the Valve policy clearly states that you can stream DotaTV tournaments still. So basically I tried to do my research before that podcast like I do any topic and ended up looking like an idiot. Classic. I would really appreciate some serious clarity from Valve on the subject because with the conflicting understanding from various people within the industry it's not helping anyone. So yea AFAIK people can still stream from DotaTV under valve policy. TL;DR: ignore everything from the moonduck podcast. Please give clarity Valve.www.reddit.com
Sajadene disagreeing, though it was a few days ago.
One theory being bandied about is that twitch is banning streams that are casting SL, even though it does not violate Valve ToS, because it takes away viewers from the official tournament(and the tournament is sponsored by twitch? I'm not entirely sure on that point). That's just a theory people have been posting and not confirmed in any way currently.
It's quite annoying that there has been no official statement on this by any party. I would guess that tournaments have arranged exclusive streaming rights with twitch. Theoretically streamers would have to go to some other platform if they want to stream it, but that'll never happen since they have no way to monetize a completely new stream. If this becomes a regular thing it might force certain streams to YouTube or others.
It's unfortunate to see the free market squeezed out, but mostly I just want to know what's going on.
From what I understand it's nothing to do with Valve and all to do with Twitch. It's Twitch's platform and they can make up rulings as they see fit.
That being said, even if Valve has something to do with it, it's still all Twitch in action and they need to come out with an official statement. Either shelling off the blame to the organizations or manning up and saying we are doing this because X, Y, and Z.
IMO on the standpoint of Twitch, they are either making more money by banning these popular streams to keep everyone on StarLadder's or doing so to prevent financial loss due to legal backlash.
On October 13 2017 18:41 DJWilma wrote: From what I understand it's nothing to do with Valve and all to do with Twitch. It's Twitch's platform and they can make up rulings as they see fit.
That being said, even if Valve has something to do with it, it's still all Twitch in action and they need to come out with an official statement. Either shelling off the blame to the organizations or manning up and saying we are doing this because X, Y, and Z.
IMO on the standpoint of Twitch, they are either making more money by banning these popular streams to keep everyone on StarLadder's or doing so to prevent financial loss due to legal backlash.
Yeah as I see it, it's all business, so I don't really see the problem too much. Maybe tournaments pay Twitch for exclusive rights: Twitch makes more money, the tournament maybe makes more money if the additional viewers out weighs the cost. Could be also that tournaments threaten to go to other platforms if Twitch doesn't offer them exclusivity. At the end of the day, the issue is for people who are streaming from in-game. They can maybe sign on with the tournament for the rights as well, their profit is slightly reduced but hopefully can still make something. All this is fine to me, since in reality the tournament is the one putting up everything to get the players to the event and run the thing.
What the community really deserves though, is to understand what's really happening. It sucks for both streamers who assume they can stream, and viewers who were watching.
On October 13 2017 18:52 emperorchampion wrote: Yeah as I see it, it's all business, so I don't really see the problem too much. Maybe tournaments pay Twitch for exclusive rights: Twitch makes more money, the tournament maybe makes more money if the additional viewers out weighs the cost. Could be also that tournaments threaten to go to other platforms if Twitch doesn't offer them exclusivity. At the end of the day, the issue is for people who are streaming from in-game. They can maybe sign on with the tournament for the rights as well, their profit is slightly reduced but hopefully can still make something. All this is fine to me, since in reality the tournament is the one putting up everything to get the players to the event and run the thing.
What the community really deserves though, is to understand what's really happening. It sucks for both streamers who assume they can stream, and viewers who were watching.
There is no other platform that benefits as much as being on Twitch. Twitch has the largest gaming audience especially for E-Sports. If they went to Youtube, both parties would lose out, because Twitch loses some viewers, the event loses a lot of viewers, and the community loses because we are weird and only like Twitch.
I wouldn't be too surprised if you see all these bans disappear right after the event is over. Considering most of the Dota 2 community is fixated on the event.
I agree with you on the whole "sign on with the tournament" thing. Maybe Valve needs to implement a two tier ticket system. A viewer ticket to watch in game, and a broadcaster ticket to stream the in-game viewing. This would compensate for the lack of various language streams, but also prevent the organizers from losing out of the benefits of exclusivity. Considering BTS was able to make a deal with StarLadder to stream for both PT and ES stream, I'm sure going forward Frogged would be able to do the same.
The situation is fairly simple, we just lack a key piece of information from valve to determine what will happen going forward.
The situation: Starladder are filing DMCA takedown claims against anybody they find streaming starladder games. Twitch, by law, has to comply in some manner and the company policy manner is to allocate copyright strikes and ban the channel for some amount of time if necessary. Twitch may be slightly more complicit here than this implies, but it's really not about them here.
Now, it's illegal to file false DMCA takedown claims but obviously that doesn't stop scumbags on the internet, so the question is are starladder scumbags on the internet or did they get a new contract with valve allocating them exclusive rights outside of DotaTV? While people who nobody should listen to are arguing one side or the other, the correct answer is "we don't know, hopefully valve will tell us".
The only other thing that could matter would be the results of somebody fighting the DMCA claim. I'm not certain what the precise mechanisms are there but you can be sure it'll all occur after starladder is complete, which is kinda their point (and part of the problem with DMCA in the first place)
On October 13 2017 23:31 Sn0_Man wrote: The situation is fairly simple, we just lack a key piece of information from valve to determine what will happen going forward.
The situation: Starladder are filing DMCA takedown claims against anybody they find streaming starladder games. Twitch, by law, has to comply in some manner and the company policy manner is to allocate copyright strikes and ban the channel for some amount of time if necessary. Twitch may be slightly more complicit here than this implies, but it's really not about them here.
Now, it's illegal to file false DMCA takedown claims but obviously that doesn't stop scumbags on the internet, so the question is are starladder scumbags on the internet or did they get a new contract with valve allocating them exclusive rights outside of DotaTV? While people who nobody should listen to are arguing one side or the other, the correct answer is "we don't know, hopefully valve will tell us".
The only other thing that could matter would be the results of somebody fighting the DMCA claim. I'm not certain what the precise mechanisms are there but you can be sure it'll all occur after starladder is complete, which is kinda their point (and part of the problem with DMCA in the first place)
If it's straight up DMCA that's pretty bullshit from Starladder.
On October 13 2017 23:31 Sn0_Man wrote: The situation is fairly simple, we just lack a key piece of information from valve to determine what will happen going forward.
The situation: Starladder are filing DMCA takedown claims against anybody they find streaming starladder games. Twitch, by law, has to comply in some manner and the company policy manner is to allocate copyright strikes and ban the channel for some amount of time if necessary. Twitch may be slightly more complicit here than this implies, but it's really not about them here.
Now, it's illegal to file false DMCA takedown claims but obviously that doesn't stop scumbags on the internet, so the question is are starladder scumbags on the internet or did they get a new contract with valve allocating them exclusive rights outside of DotaTV? While people who nobody should listen to are arguing one side or the other, the correct answer is "we don't know, hopefully valve will tell us".
The only other thing that could matter would be the results of somebody fighting the DMCA claim. I'm not certain what the precise mechanisms are there but you can be sure it'll all occur after starladder is complete, which is kinda their point (and part of the problem with DMCA in the first place)
If it's straight up DMCA that's pretty bullshit from Starladder.
It is, people have posted some screenshots of the requests (it wasn't just SL doing it) in one of the reddit threads
Maybe nobody realizes this, but you have a weapon here. No one seems to be talking about it.
There is a way to deal with this situation: file a counter-claim. Starladder's DMCA takedowns are not valid, and the DMCA has a specific mechanism for exactly this situation. Starladder does not own the game's assets and they cannot control whether someone is allowed to stream it through Dota's client. This is a clear-cut case of copyright mechanisms being abused.
You may think "Oh, it's legal mumbo-jumbo, that's for people with lawyers and money." Nope! It's free, and it works. It also takes about two minutes.
Watch Ethan explain how it works for Youtube:
You can absolutely file a counter-claim. At that point Starladder's only option is to sue you, which they will not do. Twitch will restore your channel and remove the strike.
Twitch is an uninvolved third-party. They have to be. It's the DMCA. You need to fight it! It's not hard and they won't be able to touch you after you file a counterclaim.
It's important to use this phrase when you file it:
This video is fair use under U.S. copyright law because it is noncommercial and transformative in nature and has no negative effect on the market for the original work.
If Starladder wants to argue that your stream is commercial or that it harms their market, they'll need to do that in court. And that would be a strategic disaster for them, not merely a PR disaster. They're not gonna sue you.
So for example, Bulldog, if you're reading this, you could go stream Starladder right now! Ditto for BSJ and everyone else. It's important to stand up to bullies, and you have the tools to do so.
EDIT: I went ahead and figured out the process for you to file a counter notification.
Per the Twitch DMCA guidelines, send the following to dmca@twitch.tv:
This is a DMCA counter-notice against StarLadder Limited.
The material removed was my stream on {takedown date} and its archive. This material was located at https://twitch.tv/{channel}.
I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
This video is fair use under U.S. copyright law because it is noncommercial and transformative in nature and has no negative effect on the market for the original work. Furthermore, the copyrighted content is owned by Valve Corporation, whose content policy allows non-commercial (or YouTube-like commercialization) broadcast of the content. No content with rights owned by the complainant is being used.
I, {name}, located at {address}, reachable at {email} or {phone}, do hereby consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which my address is located, or if my address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which Twitch may be found. I accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.
l declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
{electronic signature}
Crazy how simple it is once you remove the legal jargon, right? It takes two minutes and you'll get your channel back. They have to respond to your email.
Like, seriously, go stream Starladder right now. When they strike you, email them with that info. Presto, your channel is back. Unless we stand up to them, Starladder will keep getting away with this.
So to be crystal-clear about the process:
Your channel gets struck and taken offline for 24 hours.
You receive a DMCA notification via email. Example
Forward it to dmca@twitch.tv, copying the above information to the top of the email. Make sure you fill in the blanks.
Right click the generated image, click Copy Image, then paste it at the bottom of the email. It should look similar to this, but your real name.
Your channel will be restored, the strike will be removed, and Starladder will not be able to take your channel offline again.
They must restore your channel and your archived videos within 10-14 days of receiving the counter claim: it's a legal requirement (page 12). But 10-14 days is the absolute worst-case. Your archives will likely be back up much sooner.
Everyone is asking for Valve to do something, but you have the tools to do it yourself. You need to stand up to them, not Valve. It's important for you to set the precedent.
EDIT: One last point: There is absolutely no risk to you in streaming Starladder, except that your channel gets taken offline for 24 hours. The counter-claim will ensure that your archived videos are restored within a maximum of 14 days and that the strike will be removed from your channel. Your channel won't ever be banned for longer than 24h at a time.
To put it another way, if you're not willing to risk being offline for 24 hours, then you're just letting Starladder walk all over you. They pull this shit because it works. If we stop listening to them, they'll stop harassing us. If they don't, Valve will eventually spank their ass for terrorizing their community. But it's up to us in the meantime.
That's more or less how DCMA works yes, although it's hard to know precisely how to formulate a counterclaim without more information on the actual claim against you than I have (the streamers SHOULD have the info though).
The suggested counterclaim doesn't seem to be on the right base considering valve's video policy etc though.
I was assuming some shut down streamer somewhere would have already tried this though.
Honestly the real issue is that a bunch of internet pundits like myself and yourself and all these reddit authors are trying to solve something when none of us are involved enough to have sufficient knowledge of the situation just "well they should do what i say despite me knowing nothing"
Ok, internet lawyers need to slow down on one thing, fair use has not been tested for talking over video games. There is no legal guidance on the issue. That fight as not been fought yet. A lot of attorneys feel that it has a strong fair use case, but it gets really weird money is involved. And super weird when other brands are involved. But that case has got to go to either a federal circuit court of appeals first. Maybe the Supreme Court. But that needs to happen before this is settled law. DCMA claims and such are just the stop gap measure before the big fight that is bound to happen in the next 10 years between idiots who won't back down.
Anyone saying that this is “clearly fair use,” like it is objective fact is just bullshitting. Streaming is the fucking wild west and this Dota client is makes it even more wild. Team and league logos that are being shown in the game under Valve TOS that may or may not hold up in court make it all impossible to tell what will happen. It might be fine. It might not. But right now no one wants to spend the money and risk finding out.
So in short, don’t believe internet lawyers who claim “this is a clear case of fair use,” because most real lawyers would not say that.
Every knows Dota games are protected, and you cannot stream them without a license (or more acuratelly that whoever holds the license (valve) can stop people from streaming it).
The grey area is tournament games. Starladder and co are acting as if they hold the rights to the ingame feed. The avaible license from Valve to everyone implies anything from the ingame feed is free to stream.
So noone is claiming they are protected under fair use. They are claiming the IP holders allow them to stream the games. Noone but Valve can really tell what is going on.
Pretty sure this relevant. It appears you't can run ads on a rebroadcast. I bet advertisers are being more strict, especially after the YouTube implosion.
Pretty sure this relevant. It appears you't can run ads on a rebroadcast. I bet advertisers are being more strict, especially after the YouTube implosion.
Nope. That would be dumb, because streamers can't stop Twitch ads. This is what it says:
This means no advertising/branding overlays, and no sponsorships.
So no overlays. Bulldog streaming should be fine even though he gets twitch bucks from ads. What he cant do is start placing ads on the screen.
I think Valve is not handling this very well. It's pretty much saying let's punish the random languages with small follower streams. Pretty much monopolizing the event to the 'offficial' stream. I know that the organizers are paying money to set up the event and everything, but you would think they would want as much exposure to as many languages as possible.
On October 14 2017 08:40 ahswtini wrote: a bit vague tbh. is a french language stream directly competing with the organiser's stream? hard to say
If it is a studio, yeah. A random french dude streaming it, no.
They basically said, Bulldog, you can stream whathever you want. French dudes, you are out of luck. Of course they intentionally leave it vague because that is a lot easier for them. It's hard to draw a line between a studio and a personal stream. You can't say people can't profit from it because everyone profits from it.
I suppose this is what we're gonna get in terms of an official response from valve: anyone can broadcast tournaments so long as they don't use any content from the official tournament production and don't broadcast "in a commercial manner or in a way that directly competes with the tournament organizer’s stream" (the latter being quite a broad statement).
How far Valve is willing to go to enforce this stance is up for debate (I personally have no clue).
Pretty sure this relevant. It appears you't can run ads on a rebroadcast. I bet advertisers are being more strict, especially after the YouTube implosion.
Feel like this clarified a few things, but by and large it has always been the official Valve stance. Back in the day when Tobi was the only game in town for casting it was hard for new people to break in. So rather than having an old boys club monopoly on casting Valve wanted the little guy to be able to cast shit. They could cast any game in dotatv provided they didn't use someone else's obs or announcing. This came back up with NoobFromUA who was blatantly stealing other people's IP to profit himself.
The newer clarified details are things like no ads (can streamers control pre-roll ads? They never used to be able to which was bullshit on Twitch's part) which seems fine, barring pre-rolls, and not having sponsorship bars on screen. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not sure if having donations and subs show up on screen counts as "advertising/sponsorship". Basically they just added a few caveats to the system that has always been in place. Hopefully this DMCA bullshit can stop now.
Pretty sure this relevant. It appears you't can run ads on a rebroadcast. I bet advertisers are being more strict, especially after the YouTube implosion.
Feel like this clarified a few things, but by and large it has always been the official Valve stance. Back in the day when Tobi was the only game in town for casting it was hard for new people to break in. So rather than having an old boys club monopoly on casting Valve wanted the little guy to be able to cast shit. They could cast any game in dotatv provided they didn't use someone else's obs or announcing. This came back up with NoobFromUA who was blatantly stealing other people's IP to profit himself.
The newer clarified details are things like no ads (can streamers control pre-roll ads? They never used to be able to which was bullshit on Twitch's part) which seems fine, barring pre-rolls, and not having sponsorship bars on screen. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not sure if having donations and subs show up on screen counts as "advertising/sponsorship". Basically they just added a few caveats to the system that has always been in place. Hopefully this DMCA bullshit can stop now.
Main thing seems to be the Tournaments just never enforced it, or at least not much. With more money coming into the scene, those viewer numbers matter and Tournaments have a reason to enforce it. This isn't actually a legal grey area, it's just that the scene hasn't really had a reason to enforce it.
Because, let's be honest, if you were streaming a pub then switched over to streaming a Cable channel, Twitch is going to take you down as well. The recent Mayweather vs McGregor fight, at least on social media, was hilarious. They were swatting down illegal streams over every platform available, as that was an actual PPV event. (I actually saw more discussion of that than the fight itself.)
Non-English "studios" are going to need to get official permission going forward. Or stream in China.
What Grant may wind up doing is casting from replays like he did for SG vs VG. He joked? (I think it was a joke) about casting from the minimap if he didn't get permission. He never saves VODs so it shouldn't be a competition for a youtube channel either.
Pretty sure this relevant. It appears you't can run ads on a rebroadcast. I bet advertisers are being more strict, especially after the YouTube implosion.
Feel like this clarified a few things, but by and large it has always been the official Valve stance. Back in the day when Tobi was the only game in town for casting it was hard for new people to break in. So rather than having an old boys club monopoly on casting Valve wanted the little guy to be able to cast shit. They could cast any game in dotatv provided they didn't use someone else's obs or announcing. This came back up with NoobFromUA who was blatantly stealing other people's IP to profit himself.
The newer clarified details are things like no ads (can streamers control pre-roll ads? They never used to be able to which was bullshit on Twitch's part) which seems fine, barring pre-rolls, and not having sponsorship bars on screen. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not sure if having donations and subs show up on screen counts as "advertising/sponsorship". Basically they just added a few caveats to the system that has always been in place. Hopefully this DMCA bullshit can stop now.
Main thing seems to be the Tournaments just never enforced it, or at least not much. With more money coming into the scene, those viewer numbers matter and Tournaments have a reason to enforce it. This isn't actually a legal grey area, it's just that the scene hasn't really had a reason to enforce it.
Because, let's be honest, if you were streaming a pub then switched over to streaming a Cable channel, Twitch is going to take you down as well. The recent Mayweather vs McGregor fight, at least on social media, was hilarious. They were swatting down illegal streams over every platform available, as that was an actual PPV event. (I actually saw more discussion of that than the fight itself.)
Non-English "studios" are going to need to get official permission going forward. Or stream in China.
After the YouTube implosion, advertisers pay a lot more attention too. I think everyone just wants there to be one source running ads so there is no conflicts.
Pretty sure this relevant. It appears you't can run ads on a rebroadcast. I bet advertisers are being more strict, especially after the YouTube implosion.
Feel like this clarified a few things, but by and large it has always been the official Valve stance. Back in the day when Tobi was the only game in town for casting it was hard for new people to break in. So rather than having an old boys club monopoly on casting Valve wanted the little guy to be able to cast shit. They could cast any game in dotatv provided they didn't use someone else's obs or announcing. This came back up with NoobFromUA who was blatantly stealing other people's IP to profit himself.
The newer clarified details are things like no ads (can streamers control pre-roll ads? They never used to be able to which was bullshit on Twitch's part) which seems fine, barring pre-rolls, and not having sponsorship bars on screen. That all seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not sure if having donations and subs show up on screen counts as "advertising/sponsorship". Basically they just added a few caveats to the system that has always been in place. Hopefully this DMCA bullshit can stop now.
Main thing seems to be the Tournaments just never enforced it, or at least not much. With more money coming into the scene, those viewer numbers matter and Tournaments have a reason to enforce it. This isn't actually a legal grey area, it's just that the scene hasn't really had a reason to enforce it.
Because, let's be honest, if you were streaming a pub then switched over to streaming a Cable channel, Twitch is going to take you down as well. The recent Mayweather vs McGregor fight, at least on social media, was hilarious. They were swatting down illegal streams over every platform available, as that was an actual PPV event. (I actually saw more discussion of that than the fight itself.)
Non-English "studios" are going to need to get official permission going forward. Or stream in China.
After the YouTube implosion, advertisers pay a lot more attention too. I think everyone just wants there to be one source running ads so there is no conflicts.
YouTube was knifed. It didn't implode. The proxy cause was the 2016 Elections (not just the USA), but it was something that had been building for a while as YouTube's model has never worked. Advertisers are always paying attention, so this really isn't about that. At least in this instance.
This is more about the fact that eSports is getting progressively more investment, so it is more valuable to the Tournaments to enforce the rules. Dota2 normally doesn't have it, but some games end up with the streamers being bigger than the official channels at times. That is a problem because the numbers the Tournament reports is from there official stream(s). The scene has just gotten used to doing things a certain way because it takes effort to enforce those types of rules. (They also might have been slightly different in the past.) When the scene got large enough that enforcing stricter rules was valuable, it started happening.
I'm still floored by how many LANs we're getting this season. 27(?) Major/Minors. That is insane. Almost as nutty as the year SC2 had 35, I think it was. There will be Dota2 content (new, mind you) to watch pretty much every day until the week before TI7.
First of all, using the DMCA as a basis for the claim is stupid. It's an abuse of the law as-written and wouldn't pass the test, but DMCA is also the only avenue through which YouTube, Twitch etc offer users a quick and easy takedown avenue.
However, Twitch will always follow whatever a game publisher sets out as a streaming policy. When Atlus released their crazy Persona guidelines which were obviously written with YouTuber monetizations in mind, Twitch voluntarily chose to comply with them). This is because, as was noted, streaming is a legally untested area and Twitch doesn't want to be the party that draws the ESA to action.
So even though it's an absolute dogturd abuse of DMCA, following a lot of other dogturd abuses of DMCA. I'd rather game developers sue racist YouTubers directly rather than apply pressure to the video host by abusing DMCA. But in this case, whatever Valve says sounds good to them is what Twitch is gonna do.
On October 14 2017 11:43 Taf the Ghost wrote: YouTube was knifed. It didn't implode. The proxy cause was the 2016 Elections (not just the USA), but it was something that had been building for a while as YouTube's model has never worked.
Elections had nothing to do with it, there's a guy who invented a bot that can detect sketchy YouTube videos of questionable violence and ethics violations that would make advertisers queasy, and he's been campaigning advertisers with results from his bot, effectively asking, "Did you know YOUR ad appeared on this video of war footage?"
This is because he wants Google to buy his bot for many millions, and he's trying to leverage advertisers into pressuring them. He finally struck gold when advertising was enabled on a propaganda video for A Certain Well-Known Extremist Sect. Google's trying to develop their own bot internally, but along the way, tons and tons of game videos have been deemed unsuitable for advertisers because so many titles feature virtual humanoids attacking each other with weapons.
YouTube does have a problem. And it's trying to deal with it. But it's a process and at this early stage the bot is going all Jack Thompson on everyone. MUST STOP (BZZT) THE MURDER SIMULATORS
I'm fairly certain that competitive Tetris won't get flagged while Overwatch definitely will, and it's because them thar big ol firearms don't sit well with those namby-pamby advertisers who don't believe in a man's constitutional right to sneak up behind the other team and press Q.
EPT
