The Twitch 'purge' that seems to be going awry!

Image Credits: techcrunch.com
Image Credits: techcrunch.com

Recently, several streamers on Twitch had their content deleted/remove their content due to a massive strike-down by DMCA. To their shock, they had received an email stating they had been handed copyright strikes for their videos. It seems pretty normal, right?

But here's the problem: The videos weren't recent at all, and the streamers never received any previous indication about any copyright violations.


Twitch, and it's issues

Following reports from several streamers that their clips were being taken down, Twitch officially released a statement on its Twitter handle:

To prevent such copyright problems, Twitch has a system that mutes copyrighted VOD segments automatically. But when it comes to smaller clips that are 60 seconds or lesser, the clip persists even if the original VOD gets deleted.

Streamers can, however, delete these clips if they like. This system, though, fails to work properly when the broadcaster's fan base has made numerous clips over the years.

To make matters worse, streamers aren't really aware of which clips to delete and which to keep because companies can target anything they don't own. Keeping this in mind, these creators are forced to delete almost all of their clips because if they don't, as per DCMA guidelines, Twitch has to take the clip down and give them a copyright strike.

Here's what Rod Breslau has had to say about this:

Streamers like DansGaming had a hard time dealing with all the content they were set to lose or had already lost. And it's disheartening to see how the entire issue has panned out.


This incident reflects negatively on Twitch because of its lack of control over its own content. YouTube does have similar policies, but the site lets creators keep their content while notifying them about copyright issues and preventing them from monetizing those videos/clips.

The lack of a fair warning from Twitch makes it difficult for broadcasters to understand what is copyrighted and what isn't.

This isn't the first time an incident like this is happening. Earlier this year, several political Twitch streamers were suspended from the platform following a DCMA claim from a fake legal organization. The platform did apologize for the problem later, but the damage had been done.


It's about time for Twitch to start considering these matters seriously. It's a growing platform, and many people have invested a lot of time and effort in building their profiles there. To be riddled with problems like these will eventually draw people away and force them to turn to better alternatives.

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Edited by Ravi Iyer