Twitch Experiments With Intrusive Ads That Piss Off Its Most Important Asset, Its Talent

from the twitch-ain't-tv dept

As any internet platform matures, the growth it undergoes will inevitably lead to experimenting with revenue models. For a healthy chunk of the internet, advertising plays some role in those experiments. And, like anything else, there are good experiments and bad experiments.

But I am very much struggling to understand who in the hell at Twitch thought that breaking away from live streams to force viewers to watch commercials, all without the control or input of Twitch streamers, could possibly be a good idea.

“Beginning in September, as part of an ad experiment, some viewers may begin to notice that they are receiving ads during streams that others in a channel aren’t receiving,” the company wrote on its website. “Like pre-rolls, these are ads triggered by Twitch, not by the creator.”

Crucially, these ads utilize Twitch’s “picture-by-picture” functionality, which basically means that the stream you’re watching pops out into a smaller window while the ad rolls in the main window. However, ads will still steal the show from some viewers, with streamers none the wiser as to who can hear what they’re saying (picture-by-picture mutes streams) and, therefore, understand what’s happening on stream while ads are playing.

If this reads as though Twitch were trying to turn its platform into some flavor of broadcast television, where the content is broken away from in the service of displaying advertising, that's because that's exactly what this is. Which doesn't make any sense. Twitch is not television. Sure, some streamers choose to break away from their own content for advertising. In fact, doing so staves off this new process of forced breakaways. But many streamers don't do that. For a viewer to be torn away from the content that continues on, muted, all while they're forced to view ads, would be stupid on its own. To give streamers not only almost zero control over whether this happens, but also zero visibility into when and to whom it's happening, can only serve to piss everyone off.

Which is exactly what it did.

“You’re not YouTube,” said Twitch partner ThatBronzeGirl on Twitter in response to Twitch’s announcement. “When ads play in the middle of the stream, viewers actively miss out on content (muted or not). Add this to the fact that viewers are hit with an ad as soon as they enter a stream, so channel surfing is cumbersome. Idk why y’all hate viewer retention.”

“This means either one of two things happens: 1) I schedule a break in the stream to have control over ads running that are proven to drive viewers away. 2) Viewers get an ad randomly that is all but guaranteed to drive them away. Which of those is for us though?” said variety streamer Deejay Knight.

“If I don’t play enough ads, Jeff Bezos literally comes to my stream and pushes the ad button, what do I do,” said former Overwatch pro Seagull.

Let's be clear, Twitch is a thing because of the talent that chooses to use it. It's bad enough to put a new advertising model in place that pisses off viewers. But piss the talent off and they'll simply go somewhere else, particularly when the viewers voice their frustration by removing their eyeballs. Some of this seems to also be Twitch not understanding that the platform is no longer video game let's-plays. The content is wide and varied and much of it cannot function with this sort of intrusive advertising.

“A streamer could be talking about suicide prevention, and up pops an ad,” said Scottish Twitch partner Limmy. “Depending on the implementation, the streamer would either be unaware, which is bad, or the streamer has to announce a forced ad break at an inappropriate time.”

“We’re not all Overwatch and Fortnite,” said dungeon master MontyGlu. “In narrative streams such as DnD live shows and RPG game streams, 10-30 seconds removed could completely deprive people of story, context and investment.”

As the Kotaku post notes, part of the problem here is that all the monetary incentives for streamers compared with the platform are horribly misaligned. Many streamers make most of their money through subscriptions and brand partnerships. The money they get from Twitch is mostly an afterthought. Twitch, on the other hand, makes gobs of money from advertisements. It's a scenario in which the platform is incentivized by advertising while the talent is very specifically incentivized by a lack of advertising. More ads drive eyeballs away, which means less lucrative partnerships and subscriptions.

If Twitch wants to push more ads, it desperately needs to get the streamers on board.

“While I’m not allowed to say specifics, Twitch has the worst CPM ad-revenue share to creators with their standard contracts (read: not the big shots with custom negotiated rates),” said Minecraft YouTuber and Twitch streamer KurtJMac. “They want ads to run because they make bank. Pay a fair rate to creators and we’d be glad to run ads!”

Somewhat amazingly, Twitch has stated that it isn't backing down. The experiment will run its course, the company said, and it will review the data afterwards. I simply can't imagine that said data will show that intrusive ads that everyone hates are good for the company.

Filed Under: ads, interruptions, streaming
Companies: twitch

Twitch Faces Sudden Stream of DMCA Notices Over Background Music

from the open-the-hatches dept

There is obviously a great deal of action going on currently in the streaming world, spurred on in part by the COVID-19 crises that has many people at home looking for fresh content. Between the attempts to respond to social movements and tamp down "hateful" content to changes to the competitive landscape, streaming services are having themselves a moment. But with the sudden uptick in popularity comes a new spotlight painting a target on streaming platforms for everyone from scammers to intellectual property maximilists.

Twitch has recently found itself a target for the latter, suddenly getting slammed with a wave of DMCA notices that appear to focus mostly on background music.

Copyright strikes are an occupational hazard for many Twitch streamers and content creators, but a recent surge of DMCA takedown requests has overwhelmed the community. Now, Twitch support staff has responded to complaints, stating that the claims are focused on clips with background music from 2017 to 2019, and recommending that streamers remove them. The tweets also state that this is the first time that Twitch has received mass DMCA claims against clips.

Given that Twitch is still most popular as a site for live-streams and let's-plays of video games, the speculation is that a great deal of this is targeting clips that include video game music. And, as we've seen elsewhere, it's also the case that scammers are currently using game music as a method to try to takedown or monetize the videos of others. Whether or not that's what is going on here is anyone's guess, as Twitch is making it fairly clear that the flood of notices is so large that it's simply taking down content and advising its streamers to proactively take down anything that might include this sort of copyrighted content.

Except that leaves no room for a number of things, including arguments for Fair Use of certain music, not to mention streamers that may be using game music from individuals or companies that don't mind their work being up on Twitch. In the case of the latter, this is where scammers can most insidiously insert themselves into the mix.

And, what's more, even the lawyers are telling streamers not to counter the claims without getting an attorney, so fraught is the copyright landscape.

The action also prompted a response from advocates like Ryan Morrison, better known as the Video Game Attorney. Morrison advised content creators not to counter the claims without speaking to an intellectual property lawyer. "You are quite literally telling them you are going to continue what you’re doing unless they sue you," he tweeted. "Don’t threaten billionaire companies to sue you. Lawyer up."

So here's this newly thriving ecosystem of Twitch streamers, creating content that is not a mere copy of anything, but may use some copyrighted content in streams, and a huge chunk of it could get disappeared either out of legal compliance by Twitch or proactive fear-based takedowns by the streamers themselves.

All over some clips including background music? I'm trying to picture myself explaining all of this to the framers of copyright law, but somehow I don't think they'd get it.

Filed Under: background music, copyright, dmca, takedowns
Companies: twitch

Twitch And Reddit Ramp Up Their Enforcement Against 'Hateful' Content

from the content-moderation-is-a-process dept

On Monday, both Twitch and Reddit ramped up their efforts to deal with various forms of hateful content on their platforms -- and both of them ended up shutting down some forums related to President Trump -- which inevitably (but incorrectly) resulted in people again screaming about "anti-conservative bias." Reddit kicked things off by announcing new content policies (which you can read here). The key change was an expanded rule against communities that "promote hate based on identity or vulnerability."

Based on that, Reddit has permanently shuttered around 2,000 subreddits, including, most notably the r/The_Donald subreddit for Trump fans. However, as if they were expecting the bogus claims of anti-conservative bias to show up in response, Reddit also shut down r/ChapoTrapHouse, which might be considered the flip side to The_Donald subreddit, but from the left end of the traditional political spectrum. Both communities were known for their anger spewing wackos. Reddit painted its decision to suspend both as a way to show that it is applying the rules equally across all its subreddits:

All communities on Reddit must abide by our content policy in good faith. We banned r/The_Donald because it has not done so, despite every opportunity. The community has consistently hosted and upvoted more rule-breaking content than average (Rule 1), antagonized us and other communities (Rules 2 and 8), and its mods have refused to meet our most basic expectations. Until now, we’ve worked in good faith to help them preserve the community as a space for its users—through warnings, mod changes, quarantining, and more.

Though smaller, r/ChapoTrapHouse was banned for similar reasons: They consistently host rule-breaking content and their mods have demonstrated no intention of reining in their community.

To be clear, views across the political spectrum are allowed on Reddit—but all communities must work within our policies and do so in good faith, without exception.

Of course, because content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, I've already seen plenty of complaints about other Reddit forums that the site failed to take down. And I fully expect that at some point a forum will be shut down by overzealous moderators. Because that's the nature of content moderation.

Meanwhile, over on the Twitch side, the site has been coming under increasing attacks for enabling a lot of harassment. Since much of Twitch is live-streaming, it's that much more impossible to monitor. Last week, the company promised to take harassment claims more seriously and began suspending some users. On Monday, that included a temporary ban of the president's campaign account on the site. Apparently, the move was in response to comments made at recent Trump rallies, that Twitch claims violated its policies.

Twitch pointed to comments made at two rallies that led to its decision. At a campaign rally in 2016, which was recently rebroadcast on the platform, Trump said Mexico was sending over its bad actors, such as rapists or drug dealers. Twitch also pointed to Trump’s recent Tulsa rally, where he told a fictional story of a ‘tough hombre’ invading someone’s home.

“Hateful conduct is not allowed on Twitch. In line with our policies, President Trump’s channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed,” a Twitch spokesperson told CNBC.

Again, these platforms are in an impossible position -- which we detailed in our post about the content moderation impossibility theorem. If they do nothing, tons of people will call out these platforms for inaction. But in pulling down these accounts, a bunch of other people will now be furious as well. And sooner or later these platforms will pull down other accounts that lots of other people (no matter what they're political leanings) will get upset about as well. This is the nature of content moderation.

Filed Under: content moderation, donald trump, hateful content, masnick's impossibility theorem
Companies: reddit, twitch

Mixer Shuts Down, Showing Again Why You Don't Need To Freak Out By Copycat Competitors

from the getting-twitchy dept

In all sorts of intellectual property conversations, one common refrain is something like "If you let people copy others, those copycats will be just as successful without having to work to develop a product." This ire is most commonly aimed at big companies that see something successful and simply come up with their own version of it. And, to be generous, there certainly does seem to be something less than fair about that. But then you take a step back and watch just how often these copycat startups fall flat on their faces and you have to wonder why anyone worries about this stuff at all. Does nobody remember Google Plus?

Other companies have shown that it often builds more trust to not care about copycats any further than poking fun at them. Again, this is because the innovator almost always has a massive leg up on the copycat competitor, rather than the other way around. The most recent example of this is Microsoft's Mixer platform, which was supposed to be a streaming service geared towards video gaming, with Twitch being the competition it was trying to "copy" off of. Well, even with the corporate power and war chest of Microsoft behind it, the platform failed and has since been offloaded to Facebook Gaming.

The shutdown starts today, with a transition plan laid out by Microsoft for Mixer streamers. Mixer Partners will be granted partner status with Facebook Gaming, and the platform will honor and “match all existing Partner agreements as closely as possible,” according to the blog detailing the change.

Several big-name streamers, such as Ninja and Shroud, moved from Twitch exclusively to Mixer this year. On Twitter, popular streamer King Gothalion announced he would be moving to Facebook; earlier this year, he signed a deal to stream exclusively on Mixer.

Even with some pretty big streaming names on the service, Mixer failed. Why? Well, because Twitch had already built up an audience and trust within the public for its product. Microsoft didn't do enough to make Mixer stand apart from Twitch. Instead, the strategy appeared to roughly be just throwing money at some high profile streamers and expect audiences to flock to the platform because of it. That didn't work, however.

Those streamers will now be free to move on to either Facebook Gaming or back to Twitch, where most of them began. Where the majority decide to go will be quite telling, but I imagine Facebook will throw money at this the same way Microsoft did. And if Facebook doesn't do enough to make Gaming stand out and special compared with Twitch, it'll likely fail in exactly the same way. What we've seen from Facebook Gaming thus far, however, does have some more intriguing social and DIY elements.

But the real lesson here is that building a copycat startup isn't some get rich quick scheme. Or, it is, but it rarely works. So if you create a great platform, build a great community, and deliver great content... you probably are wasting time if you're worrying about copycats.

Filed Under: big companies, competition, copycats, mixer, startups, streamers, video streaming
Companies: microsoft, mixer, twitch

YouTube Streamer Hit With Demonetization Over Copyright Claims To Numbers '36' And '50'

from the wut? dept

We've long had discussions about how wide open for abuse and error YouTube's copyright and demonetization practices are. Between the hamfisted method by which the accused is treated as guilty from the get go, to the impossibility of doing large-scale policing like this in a way that's even moderately good, to the avenue for abuse that all of this creates, the fact is that YouTube's stance on copyright is a mess. The end result of all of this is that creators on YouTube operate in constant peril of having their accounts suspended or video revenues taken by others with the recourse for fraud and error being convoluted and lengthy. For a site that is in the business of content creation, that's a real problem.

And it's a problem that can get quite ridiculous, as evidenced by one recent streamer who had two videos demonetized over claims by a third party that she infringed its copyrights... on the numbers "36" and "50."

Now, if you're wondering who in the world is claiming trademarks on these two random numbers, it appears to be a company in the YouTube content creation business as well. Why they think they own the copyright on those two numbers and can use them to siphon the income of innocent YouTube streamers is anybody's guess.

The claim, made by media company Fullscreen, was simply over the number “36.” There wasn’t anything else to do with what media they were trying to protect, or any timestamps, just that the number “36” was not AnneMunition’s property.

Fullscreen describe themselves as a “social content company for talent and brands” on their company website. They are owned by Otter Media, a subsidiary of WarnerMedia, who doesn’t hold the license for The Witcher 3, or any trademarks related to the number “36.”

This is problematic for AnneMunition’s YouTube channel, because while claims are active, Fullscreen takes all monetization for the video. While the videos are over two years old, with both having very little views, they still leave a stain on her YouTube record.

Now, I fully expect that YouTube will get this corrected fairly quickly, as there is nearly zero chance that there is anything remotely valid about this copyright claim. But that really isn't the point. For YouTube's system and process to so clearly favor the accuser, particularly given how much error and abuse there is in all of this, is not sustainable. At some point, content creators will simply have had enough and go somewhere else. That might be far off on the horizon, but it's going to come eventually if some kind of change isn't made on YouTube's part.

Filed Under: anne munition, copyright, numbers
Companies: fullscreen, twitch

Content Moderation At Scale Especially Doesn't Work When You Hide All The Rules

from the getting-twitchy dept

For quite a while now, we've pointed out that doing any serious content moderation on major internet sites is laughably difficult, if not impossible. Whether done in a purely automated format, or with real human oversight, everything ends up boiling down to just how much collateral damage are we all willing to accept when sites attempt to enforce moderation rules. Even when sites attempt to communicate the rules to the public in a somewhat transparent fashion, such as Facebook, it all inevitably goes to the kind of hell that includes nixing accounts for sharing what is purely art.

But when sites don't bother to tell their users what the rules are, even after exacting punishment for violation of those rules? Well, that's when you have a bunch of Twitch streamers wondering what the hell is going on.

Earlier this week, Twitch suspended a streamer named Quqco for wearing a cosplay of Street Fighter heroine Chun-Li on stream, deeming her outfit “sexually suggestive.” This took Quqco—and many others—by surprise, given that the outfit was not overtly risqué. But this was not an isolated incident. In the past few days, Twitch has been cracking down on so-called “sexually suggestive” content more aggressively than usual, and picking some questionable targets for its crusade.

The whole post is long and very detailed and should absolutely be read in full. The article lists numerous examples of Twitch streamers being handed out warnings and suspensions under any number of circumstances that range from cosplaying as Street Fighter characters, to wearing a sports bra and baggy shorts on a stream, to drawing clothed cartoon characters. All those interviewed for the post that were on the receiving end of these warnings or suspensions were completely flummoxed.

Especially when their own inquiries into their punishment were being responded to like this.

For example, Fareeha’s warning specifically accused her of wearing “underwear or lingerie,” when she was, in reality, wearing baggy gym clothes in a setting where you’d expect to see them. Twitch’s guidelines around what streamers can and cannot wear are vague and contextual; the sort of attire Fareeha was wearing might not have cut it if a streamer was broadcasting from their bedroom, but streamers regularly wear gym clothes in the gym. Some men even go shirtless. It’s not clear why Twitch singled out Fareeha.

Fareeha specifically believes she may be the victim of another aspect of the internet that makes content moderation at scale impossible: trolls. It turns out that there are dedicated Discord channels out there where people get off on doing mass-reports of Twitch streamers they don't like for any number of reasons. Obviously, those many numbers of reasons often fall into categories that include "they're women doing things we don't like" and "they're people that don't look like us doing things we don't like." The theory goes that whatever automation Twitch has built into its moderation system -- and there surely must be something of that sort of thing -- it's likely to be sensitive to mass reporting of ToS violations. This is being gamed by trolls to get the system to punish Twitch streamers who otherwise would never have been punished.

Is that what's happening? Nobody knows, mostly because Twitch is being frustratingly opaque on the matter.

Saruei, who was suspended for drawing “nude” characters, declined to speak to Kotaku out of concern that she could face further repercussions from Twitch. However, prior to her recent suspension, she spoke out against what she feels is “hypocrisy” on Twitch’s part. Suggestive poses apparently aren’t allowed in her drawings, she said, but it’s fine when some people do them IRL.

“These are suggestive poses, right?” she said of her own art while discussing her Twitch warning during a recent (now-unavailable) stream. “We agree with that, right? Why I can’t draw waifus like this when there is fucking Twitch girls that can do it?” She went on to express frustration about the lack of clarity that she, like others, has had to deal with. “I hope it won’t happen again, because I asked them ‘What is the problem with these drawings?’” she said. “Is it the clothing or the pose? What is against Twitch guidelines? I need to know.”

Those last two sentences are all you need to hear to recognize the massive problem that is Twitch attempting to do content moderation at a scale that is largely impossible while not being transparent as to how to stay on the right side of that moderation. There is entirely too much gray area, too much room for gaming the moderation, and too much stupid collateral damage to make any of this worth it.

Meanwhile, the Twitch streamers who make Twitch's product attractive are stuck trying to figure out what the rules are. Until they decide to go somewhere else, that is.

Filed Under: content moderation, content moderation at scale, quqco, rules, transparency
Companies: twitch

Sites Warn EU Users Of Just How Bad Article 13 Will Be

from the speak-up dept

As we mentioned, a bunch of websites started protesting yesterday in the lead up to next week's vote on Article 11 and Article 13 that will fundamentally change the nature of the internet. The main ones were various European Wikipedia editions, which completely blacked out and posted a warning message. Here's the one in Germany (with automatic browser translation -- the original, obviously, is in German):

Different sites are doing different things -- and for some it depends on whether you're visiting from the EU or not, but it's good to see so many sites coming together on this. Reddit, as explained in a blog post on its site, are telling any EU Redditor who tries to post something new that it's blocked:

Lots of others have stepped up as well. The ever popular online streaming site Twitch is warning people in a variety of ways, including creating a video about its concerns:

And has also put the message all over its social media:

Patreon, the very popular website for helping creators get paid has warned its creators that under Article 13, it may need to block their content:

Others who have spoken up include Creative Commons and the Internet Archive:

Another site that joined in -- which we'll refrain from screenshotting -- is the most popular porn site on the internet, Pornhub.

Between all of this, the question now remains: will the EU Parliament ignore all of these voices? Ignore all of the over 5 million people who signed a Petition against Article 13? Will it ignore all the companies who have said that Article 13 will put them at a disadvantage compared to Google? Will it ignore of the content creators who rely on platforms like Twitch and Patreon?

Filed Under: #saveyourinternet, article 11, article 13, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, filters, intermediary liability
Companies: creative commons, internet archive, patreon, reddit, twitch, wikipedia

Latest On EU Copyright Directive: No One's Happy With Article 13, So Maybe Let's Drop It?

from the don't-wreck-the-net dept

Over the last few weeks, the so-called trilogue negotiations between the EU Council, the EU Commission and the EU Parliament on the EU Copyright Directive have continued, and it appears to have created quite a mess. As you'll recall, because the Council, the Commission, and the Parliament all passed somewhat different versions of the Directive, they now have to go through this process to come up with a version that they all agree on -- and based on some of the proposals and discussions that have come out, it's been a total mess. And specifically on Article 13 -- the provision that will mandate upload filters -- the current situation is an total mess.

Seriously, it's so bad that basically no one wants it any more. And, yes, that includes some of the copyright extremists from the legacy copyright industries. Over the weekend, a group of entertainment organizations -- including the MPAA's international branch, the MPA, the Independent Film & Television Alliance (IFTA) and the notoriously aggressive copyright litigant, the Premier League, all got together to send a letter complaining about Article 13 and the direction it's gone in. Hilariously, they're not complaining that it's over-aggressive -- rather they're whining that Article 13 might actually have been made fairer as the negotiations have gone on. Specifically, they're upset that there are now safe harbors proposed for platforms to help them avoid liability. These entertainment groups apparently think safe harbors are some sort of damn loophole:

Recall that the initial goal of Article 13 was to codify the existing case-law in a way that would enable right holders to better control the exploitation of their content vis a vis certain OCSSPs which currently wrongfully claim they benefit from the liability privilege of Article 14 E-Commerce Directive.

However, unfortunately, the Value Gap provision has mutated in such a way that it now strengthens even further the role of OCSSPs to the direct detriment of right holders and completely undermines the status quo in terms of the EU liability regime. Some of the options proposed for discussion at trilogue level indeed wrongfully undermine current law and weaken right holders’ exclusive rights by, among others: creating a new liability privilege for certain platforms that have taken specific steps to avoid the availability of infringing copyright content on their services (but have failed to do so effectively), and conditioning protection of copyright online on right holders bearing the full burden of identifying and notifying copyright infringing content to platforms. These would constitute gifts to already powerful platforms, and would de facto constitute the only real change to the current status quo in legal terms, thus improving the position of platforms, but not of right holders.

Much of this complaint is complete bullshit. Article 13 has never been about "codifying existing case-law." It has always been about upending case law in Europe (and elsewhere) to completely gut intermediary liability protections, end user-generated content platforms, and turn the internet into a TV-like broadcast system, where the legacy company have "control" again (i.e., they get to extract monopoly rents as gatekeepers). The fact that the trilogue negotiations have introduced safe harbors should be seen as a good thing, but obviously not to the signatories of this letter.

Incredibly, the signers of the letter actually ask the negotiators to drop Article 13, or, at the very least limit it to merely applying to musical works. That would still be a problem, but would certainly stop most of the collateral damage that Article 13 would cause in its present state.

Meanwhile, many other companies are recognizing just how damaging Article 13 would be. Reddit has started alerting all of its EU users (and pointing them to our very own DontWreckThe.Net website), pointing out how disastrous the EU Copyright Directive would be for everyone who uses Reddit:

The problem with the Directive lies in Articles 11 (link licensing fees) and 13 (copyright filter requirements), which set sweeping, vague requirements that create enormous liability for platforms like ours. These requirements eliminate the previous safe harbors that allowed us the leeway to give users the benefit of the doubt when they shared content. But under the new Directive, activity that is core to Reddit, like sharing links to news articles, or the use of existing content for creative new purposes (r/photoshopbattles, anyone?) would suddenly become questionable under the law, and it is not clear right now that there are feasible mitigating actions that we could take while preserving core site functionality. Even worse, smaller but similar attempts in various countries in Europe in the past have shown that such efforts have actually harmed publishers and creators...

Accordingly, we hope that today's action will drive the point home that there are grave problems with Articles 11 and 13, and that the current trilogue negotiations will choose to remove both entirely. Barring that, however, we have a number of suggestions for ways to improve both proposals. Engine and the Copia Institute have compiled them here at https://dontwreckthe.net/. We hope you will read them and consider calling your Member of European Parliament (look yours up here). We also hope that EU lawmakers will listen to those who use and understand the internet the most, and reconsider these problematic articles. Protecting rights holders need not come at the cost of silencing European internet users.

Also, the massive video streaming site Twitch has now started alerting users to the harms of Article 13 as well:

Article 13 changes the dynamic of how services like Twitch have to operate, to the detriment of creators.

Because Article 13 makes Twitch liable for any potential copyright infringement activity with uploaded works, Twitch could be forced to impose filters and monitoring measures on all works uploaded by residents of the EU. This means you would need to provide copyright ownership information, clearances, or take other steps to prove that you comply with thorny and complicated copyright laws. Creators would very likely have to contend with the false positives associated with such measures, and it would also limit what content we can make available to viewers in the EU.

Operating under these constraints means that a variety of content would be much more difficult to publish, including commentary, criticism, fan works, and parodies. Communities and viewers everywhere would also suffer, with fewer viewer options for entertainment, critique, and more.

So, at this point, we have the internet platforms calling out how the Copyright Directive will harm all sorts of creators by making the platforms they use impossible. We have the film and sports industries complaining that there might actually be some safe harbors included in Article 13, which would apparently ruin the whole point for them (!?!?!?!?!?). The only one who still thinks Article 13 is a good thing apparently is the legacy recording industry who has been fairly open in that the entire point of Article 13 is to force YouTube to pay them more (even though it wouldn't actually do that).

So, hey, maybe it's time to scrap Articles 11 and 13 and not try to rush through copyright proposals that will have a massive impact on how the internet works, done by bureaucrats who clearly don't understand the impacts of what they're proposing, while in backroom negotiations?

Filed Under: article 11, article 13, censorship, copyright, eu, eu copyright directive, filters, intermediary liability, link tax, safe harbors, trilogue negotiations, upload filters
Companies: ifta, mpa, premier league, reddit, twitch