This has led to the logical conclusion of an <i>official Twitch broadcast</i> getting hit with a copyright audio penalty.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/xkeepah/status/497147167803310080" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/xkeepah/status/497147167803310080</a>
I'd really like to see Twitch implement a system where streamers could upload separate audio channels for their videos. That way a single channel could be muted for infringement without muting the others. You wouldn't have to lose the audio from the game and player commentary, which is often integral to the video, just because a copyrighted song was playing in the background. This is actually a feature that would have some value to me as a user because I often watch streams where I don't like the music but can't turn it off without losing the caster's commentary which often times the best part.<p>This does put an extra burden on casters but maybe the value of degrading gracefully in the face of copyright complaints will make it worth it.
The system appears to be blocking copyrighted <i>in-game</i> audio, see [1] and [2].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dansgaming/b/550331246" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/dansgaming/b/550331246</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/adam_ak/b/555134005" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/adam_ak/b/555134005</a>
I’m surprised this isn’ making more waves here. If you check out a video from almost any user profile that primarily plays PC games[1] or is a speedrunner[2], you’ll find most of their videos muted.<p>This is not going to end well…<p>[1] <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/kaceytron/c/4761968" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/kaceytron/c/4761968</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/iateyourpie/b/552446830" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/iateyourpie/b/552446830</a>
Fascinating moves by the company. They gain users by looking the other way for illegal sports broadcasts which made up the majority of watched content at Justin.tv. Next they pivot to e-sports with Twitch which is a huge success but also plagued by rampant copyright issues (this is the music, but the actual broadcast of some games may be illegal). They look the other way again until they decide to cash out, which means a quick clean up before the billion dollar pay day.<p>The lesson to VC backed startups here should be to ignore the laws you don't want to bother with until the last possible second (and then some more!), preferably with offer paperwork in your hands. Airbnb has shown that this can scale.
Okay, can the announcement of the Google buyout happen already? If it wasn't obvious before, it sure is now...<p>Also, from the blog post:<p>"Starting today, Twitch will be implementing technology intended to help broadcasters avoid the storage of videos containing unauthorized third-party audio. "<p>We're removing content because we want to help broadcasters, yeaaaaa, okay buddies!
The system is even flagging someone singing.<p>heres the youtube ver, unmuted <a href="http://youtu.be/E3GpMaVdmZo?t=7s" rel="nofollow">http://youtu.be/E3GpMaVdmZo?t=7s</a>
twitch archive <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/iplaywinner/b/555065724" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/iplaywinner/b/555065724</a>
There's no way to know if this has anything to do with the (as far as I know unconfirmed) rumors of their acquisition by Google, but it's interesting that in e-sports communities the general response to those rumors was "oh well, there goes streaming with background music."
So if you stream a game and listen to a single 3 minute song, 30 minutes of your stream will be muted. This is a fantastic means of protecting content creators!
What if Google, instead of blocking the stream, just reserved a portion of the revenue generated from that video, for the rights holder, equal to but not greater than the amount needed for traditional over the air licensing?
I'm not surprised they did and at the same time this just makes it obvious that the way in which copyright for "performances" is done needs to be fixed.
Not sure why the comments here are so negative. People make money from Twitch, and most of them have music playing in the background. You can't just take someone else's work and use it to improve your own without expecting to compensate them.<p>I hope that the policing of mainstream commercial music use will drive content creators to use music owned by small companies and independents. Twitch should do an integration with Bandcamp or something.
Some interesting bits about this system and how it's implemented:<p>Blocking is implemented using volume control in the flash player. The flash player has multiple bugs that currently undo the blocking.<p>Twitch already has an API used for playing VODs and streams on devices that don't run Flash, and as a result of volume-control-based muting, muting does not apply to any of these devices (or software using the API, of which there is plenty).<p>Worse still, not only does muting not apply to the API, but ads don't show up either. So muting will (at least in the short term) drive users to playback via API in order to avoid it, and coincidentally reduce ad impressions. Ideally Twitch will address this in the future by muting the actual VODs at the file level instead of in the player.<p>The Content ID detection database they're using (from a third party, Audible Magic) includes many game soundtracks and other licensed pieces of audio that are used legally by actual games. Twitch calls this out in their announcement, so they knew it would be happening. As a result, VODs that merely contain playback of a real game end up muted - one of the examples going around the web right now is footage of Fallout 3, because FO3's soundtrack contained some licensed songs from the 50s/60s that are in Audible Magic's database. [3]<p>Suppressing copyrighted music from your streams is complicated further by the fact that the database is stated to contain ambient audio and not just music; many games do not have a separate volume slider for ambient audio, even if they have one for music. Suppressing that audio may require muting the game entirely.<p>Some games also tie licensed music into game-relevant content; Fallout 3 is one of them - the in-game radio has narration and dialogue from plot-relevant characters mixed in between the songs. Muting the audio or not using the in-game radio would actually hinder the experience of playing the game in a measurable way as a result.<p>Services like Audible Magic also have a long track record of asserting incorrect ownership for content. Many indie game developers & musicians were hit by an erroneous banwave as a result of this technology last year due to a shady service called TuneCore asserting ownership of music published by their customers - despite their customers not authorizing this behavior. [1]<p>Because Content ID takedowns on YouTube (and now Twitch) do not operate through the legal system or the DMCA hierarchy, there is no legal recourse available to content creators or rightsholders in this scenario, and the companies that have deals with YT/Twitch are free to siphon ad money or take down content whenever and wherever they like. With DMCA takedown notices there is a counter-notice mechanism, but since these content ID systems are based on private agreements between companies, no such mechanism exists.<p>The service twitch uses charges per-request for content identification so this likely influenced the decision to mute 30-minute blocks instead of at a smaller level of granularity. At the size of Twitch's content database they may be paying a significant amount of money to Audible Magic for this service. [2]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.vg247.com/2013/12/18/99-of-youtube-gaming-channels-will-die-soon-copyright-strike-barrage-discussed/" rel="nofollow">http://www.vg247.com/2013/12/18/99-of-youtube-gaming-channel...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.audiblemagic.com/copyright-compliance-pricing/" rel="nofollow">https://www.audiblemagic.com/copyright-compliance-pricing/</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.twitch.tv/dansgaming/b/550331246" rel="nofollow">http://www.twitch.tv/dansgaming/b/550331246</a>
Crazy idea: Can't a streamer just setup their own live streaming audio server (i.e. Shoutcast and Icecast) and tell users to listen to that while watching their Twitch? This way, their videos can get archived later for on-demand use and the livestream isn't affected /too/ much.
Anyone know how this system works? It may be possible to exploit the algorithm to find small transformations that disrupt it's ability to identify audio. This has been shown to be possible in some neural net based systems, for example.