Fortnight’s Nexus battle event may expose Twitch streamers to TMCA issues

Epic Games and Twitch are streaming streamers FortnightThe Marvel-Crossover “Nexus War” event that ended the season last night where they have to remove VOD clips to avoid the risk of TMCA copyright strikes.

The event where players saw the world-eating Galactic In a ten minute battle, AC / DC’s Demon Fire featured as a licensed background song during an episode set on the game’s iconic battle bus. So, just before the event starts, the official Fortnight status Twitter account Twitch warned streamers “We cannot prevent your VOD / clip content from being flagged by the site’s copyright detection systems. General recommendations are to disable your VoDs or disable VODs / clips altogether, to protect you against any claims or strikes.”

After the event, Twitch support Tweeted a similar warningTell users who have streamed silent sound from the game, “You may want to be aware of the DMCA risk from music at that event” and “Consider exporting / downloading and then deleting related VODs or clips”.

More than 130,000 Twitch channels were streamed Fortnight At its peak on Tuesday night, it reached nearly 1.6 million viewers Figures collected by Twitchrocker. This is from peak streaming of 10,000 to 15,000 accounts and 200,000 to 300,000 viewers throughout November.

Continuing problem

Warnings about Fortnight The event music comes a few weeks after there were many Twitch users Attacked by Twitch’s vague warnings Some archived VODs will be removed in a few days thanks to TMCA downgrade notices. Instead of specifying which content will be deleted – the affected users who have been given the right opportunity to file a counter-claim to those streamers will be required to review your Clips, VODs and any other content on your Creator Dashboard and remove any unlicensed copyrighted material of your copyright. If you do not know the contents, you can delete it. ”

Last month, Twitch Publicly apologized How it handled that copyright repression and the lack of granular tools available to streamers to manage infringing music content. But the service also warned users to be simple[not] If you do not have all the rights to the music or you do not have the permission of the rights holder (s), play the recorded music in your stream. Doing this is the best protection for your streams going forward. ”

The Fortnight The status quo specifically called the tweet “no solutions similar to Lick” A service that allows youtubers to purchase music licenses quickly and easily For their videos. Twitch was recently introduced Soundtrack, The library of music whose rights have been destroyed, streamers can add as background music to their videos.

But this service does not help with licensed music that may appear on streaming games Fortnight Event. Those games are often subject to their own EULAs, which may impose additional restrictions on streaming rights.

Twitch says it “actively talks with major record labels about possible approaches to additional licenses applicable to the Twitch service”, but those talks were “not recorded by the majority of our creators” as part of their streams of music, and the revenue impacts for those who created such a deal were substantial. “