14 DAY TRIAL // Twitch is taking a page out of YouTube’s book and has decided to start muting audio tracks in video recordings of gameplay if the tracks are copyrighted.
This means that if you often listen to music while playing your favorite video games and recording them to post on Twitch, you may want to cut down on sharing music you don’t own because your entire video will get muted down, possibly ruining the experience for all your viewers.
The technology behind this is pretty much the same one YouTube commonly used before it launched Content ID, making it even easier to track down copyrighted content.
“Starting today, Twitch will be implementing technology intended to help broadcasters avoid the storage of videos containing unauthorized third-party audio. We respect the rights of copyright owners, and are voluntarily undertaking this effort to help protect both our broadcasters and copyright owners,” explains Elizabeth Baker, general counsel for Twitch.
The scanning will only be done on recorded videos and not on live streams. There’s also no automated takedown system in place for live content. For the duration of the mute, the progress bar will turn red, so viewers will know that it happened because of copyrighted tracks running in the background. There will also be a notification displayed on screen to make things clear.
Twitch admits that its Audio Recognition system is not guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate and it may sometimes return false positives or miss content from copyright owners who do not work with Audible Magic. That being said, video owners are responsible for clearing all such rights regarding music involved in their content. Free resources are available online, such as Creative Commons, Jamendo or SongFreedom, so those would be good places to start for those who want to make sure their videos aren’t going to get muted completely or in part.
Twitch is also inviting copyright owners and broadcasters to send the company a counter-notification compliant with the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if their videos were muted for no good reason.
“Twitch has partnered with Audible Magic without waiving any rights or defenses available to it under law. Twitch is not obligated to filter content stored on the Twitch platform by its users and assumes no liability for the actions of its users notwithstanding the implementation of the Audible Magic technology,” the company wrote about the new changes that are taking place on the platform.
