Why Companies Keep Folding to Copyright Pressure, Even If They Shouldn't

from the fight-back-for-user-rights dept

The giant record labels, their association, and their lobbyists have succeeded in getting a number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives to pressure Twitter to pay money it does not owe, to labels who have no claim to it, against the interests of its users. This is a playbook we’ve seen before, and it seems to work almost every time. For once, let us hope a company sees this extortion attempt for what it is and stands up to it.

Here is the deal. Online platforms that host user content are not liable for copyright infringement done by those users so long as they fulfill the obligations laid out in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). One of those obligations is to give rightsholders an unprecedented ability to have speech removed from the internet, on demand, with a simple notice sent to a platform identifying the offending content. Another is that companies must have some policy to terminate the accounts of “repeat infringers.”

Not content with being able to remove content without a court order, the giant companies that hold the most profitable rights want platforms to do more than the law requires. They do not care that their demands result in other people’s speech being suppressed. Mostly, they want two things: automated filters, and to be paid. In fact, the letter sent to Twitter by those members of Congress asks Twitter to add “content protection technology”—for free—and heavily implies that the just course is for Twitter to enter into expensive licensing agreements with the labels.

Make no mistake, artists deserve to be paid for their work. However, the complaints that the RIAA and record labels make about platforms are less about what individual artists make, and more about labels’ control. In 2020, according to the RIAA, revenues rose almost 10% to $12.2 billion in the United States. And Twitter, whatever else it is, is not where people go for music.

But the reason the RIAA, the labels, and their lobbyists have gone with this tactic is that, up until now, it has worked. Google set the worst precedent possible in this regard. Trying to avoid a fight with major rightsholders, Google voluntarily created Content ID. Content ID is an automated filter that scans uploads to see if any part—even just a few seconds—of the upload matches the copyrighted material in its database. A match can result in either a user’s video being blocked, or monetized for the claiming rightsholder. Ninety percent of Content ID partners choose to automatically monetize a match—that is, claim the advertising revenue on a creator’s video for themselves—and 95 percent of Content ID matches made to music are monetized in some form. That gives small, independent YouTube creators only a few options for how to make a living. Creators can dispute matches and hope to win, sacrificing revenue while they do and risking the loss of their channel. Fewer than one percent of Content ID matches are disputed. Or, they can painstakingly edit and re-edit videos, or avoid including almost any music whatsoever and hope that Content ID doesn’t register a match on static or a cat’s purr.

While any creator has the right to use copyrighted material without paying rightsholders in circumstances where fair use applies, Content ID routinely diverts money away from creators like these to rightsholders in the name of policing infringement. Fair use is an exercise of your First Amendment rights, but Content ID forces you to pay for that right. WatchMojo, one of the largest YouTube channels, estimated that over six years, roughly two billion dollars in ads have gone to rightsholders instead of creators. YouTube does not shy away from this effect. In its 2018 report “How Google Fights Piracy,” the company declares that “the size and efficiency of Content ID are unparalleled in the industry, offering an efficient way to earn revenue from the unanticipated, creative ways that fans reuse songs and videos.” In other words, Content ID allows rightsholders to take money away from creators who are under no obligation to obtain a license for their lawful fair uses.

That doesn’t even include the times these filters just get things completely wrong. Just the other week, a programmer live-streamed his typing and a claim was made for the sound of “typing on a modern keyboard.” A recording of static got five separate notices placed on it by the automated filter. These things don’t work.

YouTube also encourages people to simply use only the things that they have a license for or are in a library of free resources. That ignores that there is a fair use right to use copyrighted material in certain cases, and lets companies argue that no one has to use their work without paying since these free options exist.

So, when the labels make a lot of disingenuous noise about how inadequate the DMCA is and how platforms need to do more, they have YouTube to point to as a “voluntary” system that should be replicated. And companies will fold, especially if they end up being inundated with DMCA takedowns—some bogus—and if they think the other option is being required to do it by law, the implicit threat of a letter like the one Twitter received.

This tactic works. Twitch found itself buried under DMCA takedowns last year, handled that poorly, and then found itself being, like Twitter, blamed for taking money out of the hands of musicians by the RIAA. Twitch now makes removing music and claimed bits of videos easier, has adopted a similar repeat infringer policy to YouTube’s, and makes deleting clips easier for users. Snap, owner of Snapchat, went the route of getting a license, paying labels to make music available to its users.

Creating a norm of licensed or free music, monetization, or automated filters functionally eviscerates fair use. Even if people have the right to use something, they won’t be able to. On YouTube, reviewers don’t use the clips of the music or movies that are the best example of what they’re talking about—they pick whatever will satisfy the filter. That is not the model we want as a baseline. The baseline should be more protective of legal speech, not less.

Unfortunately, when the tech companies are facing off against the largest rightsholders, it's users who most often lose. Twitter is only the latest target, we hope they become the one to stand up for its users.

Originally posted to the EFF Deeplinks blog.

Filed Under: congress, copyright, dmca, licensing, music
Companies: twitter

Twitch Finally Gets Around To Letting Banned Streamers Know Why They Were Banned

from the victory! dept

We've covered Twitch's no good, very bad time for many months now, which should give you an indication just how bad this time has been. If you need a brief background, the major points of contention have been the Amazon-owned company having a laughably one-sided approach to DMCA takedowns of content, its complete inept method for temp-banning its own creative community over copyright claims, and its totally vague approach to banning creators over various rule-breaking when it comes to Twitch's indecipherable guidelines and the capricious manner in which it applies them.

While all of it is frankly bad, the lowest hanging fruit in all of this has always been the lack of communication Twitch has offered its own creative community when it comes to bans, copyright issues, or guidelines. For instance, Twitch, at first, would just disappear content, with little or no notice to the streamer who authored it. When it has given any notice to creators, that notice has traditionally been so devoid of any details so as to be entirely useless. Which I suppose is why the recent announcement by Twitch that it will finally tell streamers who have been hit with a copyright takedown what that infringing content is... is good?

The days of Twitch mysteriously suspending popular streamers are coming to an end. The Amazon-owned streaming platform announced yesterday that it will now actually tell streamers who get temporarily banned why they’ve been punished. It only took 10 years, folks.

“As of today, enforcement notifications sent to suspended users will include the name of the content and the date of the violation to ensure they have better clarity about what content is being actioned on,” Twitch Support wrote on Twitter. Based on a sample screenshot, these new explanations will include what the streamer did that violated Twitch’s Terms of Service or Community Guidelines and which stream it happened on.

So, again, this is a good thing, except, as the opening Kotaku graf hints, this announcement also highlights the absurdity of Twitch not having been doing this the entire time. And this should really also callout the minimalist nature of the "infringement" in question, which oftentimes involves video game audio assets that are part of a Twitch stream, or background music and whatnot. In other words, the need for this level of detail, though definitely crucial, also should let you know that these streamers aren't trying to infringe copyright. If they were, there wouldn't be so much confusion over why they were being banned or having their content taken down.

All of this certainly isn't lost on the very community Twitch is now trying to placate.

Twitch was founded back in 2011 and later acquired by Amazon in 2014 for nearly $1 billion. It’s a big business, but only because of the content put there by others. Telling creators why they’ve been occasionally locked out of what is for some a defacto job is the least Twitch could do, though still far from what a lot of users would ideally like. Even now Twitch Support’s announcement tweet for the ban explanations is littered with complaints about the lack of transparency and communication around things like the appeals process.

In other words, now that Twitch has gotten things to where they probably should have been at the jump, the real work to win back its community begins.

Filed Under: content moderation, copyright, dmca, information, policy violations, rules, streamers, takedowns
Companies: twitch

UFC COO Publicly Pushing 'Notice And Stay Down' Reforms To DMCA, Despite That Being Horrible For Almost Everyone

from the fight! dept

In the United States, the DMCA has a "notice and takedown" process. Section 512(c) outlines all of this and provides details on what obligations service providers, such as websites and social media platforms, must meet in order to retain their safe harbor provisions. This summary from Wikipedia is a good primer:

The Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, passed into law in 1998 as part of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides safe harbour protection to "online service providers" for "online storage" in section 512(c). Section 512(c) applies to online service providers that store copyright infringing material. In addition to the two general requirements that online service providers comply with standard technical measures and remove repeat infringers, section 512(c) also requires that the online service providers: 1) do not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, 2) are not aware of the presence of infringing material or know any facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent, and 3) upon receiving notice from copyright owners or their agents, act expeditiously to remove the allegedly copyright infringing material.

I added the bolded section for emphasis. Why? Well, many in the copyright industries hate the notice and takedown system because it requires them to notify service providers of individual cases for infringement. That requires work, of course. Work that these service providers very much do not want to do. Instead, many propose a notice and stay down system. What that would do would be to allow the copyright holder to essentially notify a service provider of infringing material once, after which it would be up to the service provider to do the policing of that content on their own sites. This was recently exemplified by the UFC's COO, Lawrence Epstein.

The DMCA is a “very reactive type of protocol,” Epstein notes, since the law places the onus on the copyright holder to act. This presents a timing problem for a live sports broadcast. The highest value for that broadcast—especially one distributed through a PPV arrangement—is when the event happens. A notice and takedown can take several minutes, even a half hour. By the time an illegal stream is removed, it could be too late. The Poirier-McGregor match lasted only about five minutes before McGregor suffered a leg injury and Poirier was credited with a TKO victory.

“It’s not an appropriate remedy,” Epstein charges, adding that the “vast majority” of the piracy is taking place on “big platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.” Epstein also stresses that “we see the same people doing it. There are repeat offenders who aren’t deterred by the process.”

The UFC would like to see the DMCA amended to include a “stay down system” whereby the copyright holder need only notify the service provider of infringing material. It would then become the obligation of the provider to monitor repeat infringers and prevent them from engaging in illegal streaming and other piracy on the provider’s platform. “These big platforms have to take responsibility for what happens on their platforms,” Epstein asserts. “It can’t be reactive.”

For context only, the latest UFC PPV event raked in $125 million. And, to be clear, I can sympathize with Epstein on the concept of how this all works for live-streamed, pay-per-view broadcasts. It's not the same policing a movie on the internet as it is policing infringing live-streams.

But, and this is the key part, that is a business model issue, not an issue requiring the wholesale retrofit of the DMCA. Put another way, if the notice and takedown system is overall beneficial for most of the public interest, altering it is not an appropriate remedy simply because it isn't working for the UFC.

And there are very good reasons why a notice and takedown system is better for nearly everyone than a notice and stay down system. For starters, while Epstein invokes the "big players" like Facebook and the like, those big entities are the ones that at least would stand a chance of operating in a notice and stay down system. They have the money, tools, and people to throw at the problems such a system would create. But what about smaller companies and sites? Startups? How in the world are they going to police other people's content for them? They won't and the liability such a system would create will keep startups from every... you know... starting up.

Beyond that, it's not like the "stay down" part works well in practice even when tried. The uploading of content by one person that is infringing does not make the uploading of it by another infringing. Viacom found that out directly by suing Google over a bunch of YouTube videos... that Viacom staff uploaded on purpose. In an effort to stop piracy, Viacom attempted to stop promotion of its own material by its own staff. If the companies responsible for content can't properly police copyright infringement of that content, what hope do service providers have?

And, as one professor explains to Yahoo! Sports, there is all of that plus issues of fraud and censorship that suddenly are opened up by a stay down system.

Ryan Vacca, a copyright law professor at UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law who has represented clients in the sports and entertainment law industries, agrees that placing the burden on copyright owners to police copyrights creates persistent challenges for owners in a world where streaming has become so omnipresent. “Given the enormous amount of copying and performing that occurs online,” Vacca explains, “it’s understandable that content owners want to shift that burden to other actors in the online ecosystem.”

Yet Vacca also sees “countervailing concerns” that could arise ”if the law is changed to make it too easy to have materials taken down.” He cautions that some copyright owners make infringement claims “not to protect their copyright, but to censor legitimate uses of copyrighted materials, such as critical commentary or parody.” Vacca adds that placing the burden on platforms “has the potential to disadvantage startup competitors by imposing additional costs on them that are more difficult to absorb than for established companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube . . . This could have a negative effect on innovation for online platforms.”

So, the open question in summary is: should we really be altering the DMCA that has allowed for so much innovation and flourishing within the online ecosystem just so the UFC can possibly make even more than the $125 million per event it's making now? That feels like a question with an obvious answer.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca 512, lawrence epstein, notice and staydown, notice and takedown
Companies: ufc

Copyright Ruins Everything Again: How Dare A Sports Writer Get People Excited About The Olympics!

from the oh-stuff-it dept

Every few years, the Olympics comes along to remind us not so much about the power of personal triumphs in sports, but the vast overreach of copyright laws to control absolutely everything for no damn reason at all.

Over the weekend, a pretty amazing story came out of the Olympics. Dutch runner Sifan Hassan was entering the final lap in a 1,500 meter heat, when the runner in front of her tripped, leading Hassan to fall as well. Both runners were then way behind the rest of the pack, with just about 350 meters left to go. Somehow, Hassan got up, and passed 11 other Olympic runners to win the race.

The only reason I learned about this was because I saw a tweet by Sports Illustrated writer Chris Chavez that included a clip showing that final lap from the fall to the victory. That tweet went super viral. When I spotted it, it had thousands of retweets. Indeed, the NPR link I put above with the story suggests you watch it by linking to Chris's tweet. Of course, if you go there now this is what you'll see:

That missing tweet in the middle was the video.

It's unclear if it was NBC or the Olympics (or someone else?) who took it down, but either way this is ridiculous. Yes, you can argue that the copyright holder has a right to take it down, but even that seems debatable. This seems like a pretty clear case of fair use -- a reporter reporting on something.

But, even ignoring the fair use argument, this is just so stupid and pointless. Chavez was giving free advertising and promotion to an amazing moment at the Olympics. And it was going viral. Crazy viral. What kind of stupid landlord looks at someone giving them massive promotional value for free and says "we gotta stop that sorta thing!" The infatuation with ownership and control at the expense of word-of-mouth promotion makes no sense at all. It actively holds back interest in the event.

Filed Under: chris chavez, copyright, dmca, olympics, sifan hassan, takedowns, viral, word of mouth
Companies: nbc, olympics, twitter

New 'Guardians Of The Galaxy' Game Has Game Streamers Worried Over Integral Music In The Game

from the ooga-chaka dept

With streaming games and "let's plays" becoming a dominant force of influence in the gaming world, one of the sillier trends we've seen is video games coming out with "stream safe" settings that strip out audio content for which there is no broadcast license. We've talked already about how this sort of thing is not a solution to the actual problem -- the complicated licenses surrounding copyrighted works and the permission culture that birthed them -- but is rather a ploy to simply ignore that problem entirely. That hasn't stopped this from becoming a more regular thing in the gaming world, even as we've seen examples of "stream safe" settings fail to keep streams from getting DMCA notices.

Well, if there were a perfect example of a video game that highlights the absurdity of all of this, it may well be the forthcoming Guardians of the Galaxy title. If you're not familiar with the GotG movies, you should know that retro music plays a major role in the films. The game promises that retro music will be just as important as in the films. And that's what immediately set off concern for game streamers.

One group that is wary of this heavy emphasis on pop music is the livestreaming crowd, who are concerned that it could make the game near-impossible to broadcast. This is because Twitch and YouTube creators are regularly hit with what are known as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices.

As such, a number of social media users have expressed hesitancy to livestream Guardians of the Galaxy when it comes out in October, as they are worried that the game's licensed soundtrack might cause them to receive a DMCA strike.

This seemed to be the general reaction to the game among streamers. The game publisher of course secured the rights to the songs to be included in the game, but did not license the songs for rebroadcast. Because the world is an extremely stupid place, streaming a game equates to a rebroadcast of any music within it. And, also because the world is an extremely stupid place, Eidos-Montreal's solution to this is once again to mute licensed music.

Newsweek contacted Eidos-Montréal to ask if they had made any considerations for Twitch streamers in respect to Guardians of the Galaxy's music. Over email, a spokesperson confirmed that there will actually be an option to mute licensed tracks, if players want to be absolutely safe from potential DMCA takedowns.

And so a major thematic element for the franchise will be nixed in any live-streams of the game. That is immensely frustrating. Yes, "dad rock" is an important component of the franchise and will be likewise in the game, but nobody is buying the game in order to listen to the music. By the same token, nobody is going to watch a stream of the game for that music, either. The music is important to the franchise, but its appearance in a live-stream of the game is certainly not a replacement for buying it in the marketplace.

But here we are, because permission culture demands it.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, guardians of the galaxy, let's play, music, streaming

Music Publishers Sue Roblox In Full Frontal Assault On The DMCA

from the here's-a-big-one dept

A huge and potentially important copyright lawsuit was filed this week by basically all of the big music publishers against the immensely popular kids' gaming platform Roblox. Although the publishers trade association, the NMPA, put out a press release claiming the lawsuit, it doesn't appear that NMPA is actually a party. The lawsuit is, in many ways, yet another full frontal assault on the DMCA's safe harbors by the legacy music industry. There's a lot in this lawsuit and no single article is going to cover it all, but we'll hit on a few high points.

First, this may seem like a minor point, but I do wonder if it will become important: buried in the massive filing, the publishers mention that Roblox did not have a registered DMCA agent. That seems absolutely shocking, and potentially an astoundingly stupid oversight by Roblox. And there's at least some evidence that it's true. Looking now, Roblox does have a registration, but it looks like it was made on... June 9, the day the lawsuit was filed.

Wow. Now, that may seem embarrassing, but it might actually be more embarrassing for the Copyright Office and raise a significant and important legal question. Because it appears that Roblox did at one time have a DMCA agent registration but, as you may recall, back in 2016, the Copyright Office unilaterally decided to throw out all of those registrations and force everyone to renew (and then to renew again every three years through a convoluted and broken process).

There's an argument to be made that the Copyright Office can't actually do this. The law itself just says you need to provide the Copyright Office with the information, not that it needs to be renewed. The Copyright Office just made up that part. Perhaps we finally have a test case on our hands to see whether or not the Copyright Office fucked up in dumping everyone's registration.

Still, that's a minor point in the larger lawsuit. The publishers throw a lot of theories against the wall, hoping some will stick. It seems like most should be rejected under the DMCA's safe harbors, because it truly is user generated content, even if the lawsuit tries a variety of approaches to get around that. Part of the lawsuit argues contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, more or less pulling the "inducement" theory from the Grokster ruling, which basically says that if you as a company encourage your users to infringe, you could still be liable (this is, notably, nowhere in the actual law -- it's just what the Supreme Court decided).

But to get there, the lawyers for the music publishers seem to want to take a Roblox executive's comments completely out of context, in a somewhat astounding manner. The "proof" that Roblox is encouraging people to infringe is here:

Roblox is well aware that its platform is built and thrives on the availability of copyrighted music. As Jon Vlassopulos, Roblox’s global head of music, publicly stated just last year: “We want developers to have great music to build games. We want the music to be, not production music, but really great [commercial] music.” (Alteration in original). To that end, Roblox actively encourages its users to upload audio files containing copyrighted music and incorporate them into game content on the Roblox platform. Roblox advertises the importance of music in games and makes it easy for users to upload, share, and stream full-length songs.

But... if you read the article that they're using for that Vlassopulos quote, it's not directed at developers and users of their platform. It's targeted at musicians and the music industry. The whole point of the quote is to let musicians and the industry know that Roblox is open to licensing deals. It's pretty obnoxious to try to spin that as encouraging people to infringe when, in context, it sure looks like the exact opposite. I mean, literally the next sentence (which doesn't make it into the lawsuit) is about how they're "testing the waters" by making a deal with a small indie label to make all of its music available on Roblox.

So it seems to be Roblox saying the exact opposite of what the publishers are claiming. That's... kinda fucked up.

The lawsuit also tries to spin the impossible task of trying to moderate as proof that any failures in moderation are deliberate.

There is no question that Roblox has the right and ability to stop or limit the infringement on its platform. But Roblox refuses to do so, so that it can continue to reap huge profits from the availability of unlicensed music. While Roblox touts itself as a platform for “user-generated” content, in reality, it is Roblox—not users—that consciously selects what content appears on its platform. Roblox is highly selective about what content it publishes, employing over a thousand human moderators to extensively pre-screen and review each and every audio file uploaded. Roblox’s intimate review process includes review of every piece of copyrighted music, generally identified by title and artist—to ensure that it meets Roblox’s stringent and detailed content guidelines and community rules. This process ensures that Roblox plays an integral role in monitoring and regulating the online behavior of its young users.

Roblox thus unquestionably exercises substantial influence over its users and the content on its platform, ostensibly in the name of “safety.” Yet Roblox allows a prodigious level of infringing material through its gates, purposely turning a blind eye for the sake of profits. Rather than take responsibility, Roblox absurdly attempts to pass the obligation to its users—many of whom are young children—to represent to Roblox that they own the copyrights to the works they have uploaded.

Coincidentally, just last week we published our content moderation case study on Roblox, focused on how it tries to stop "adult" content on the platform. We noted that the company is very aggressive and hands-on with its moderation efforts but (importantly) it still makes mistakes, because every content moderation system at scale will make mistakes.

So just because Roblox is aggressive in its moderation, and even if it says it reviews everything, that doesn't mean that it "refuses" to stop infringement. It just means it doesn't catch it all. Indeed, the company has said in the past that it uses an automated third party monitoring tool to try to catch unauthorized songs (though, notably, this lawsuit is about the publishing rights, not the recording rights, so arguably a monitoring tool might catch some sound recordings while missing other songs that implicate songwriters/publishers -- but that's getting super deep in the weeds).

Indeed, the impossibility of catching everything -- while still encouraging websites to try -- is why we want things like Section 512 of the DMCA or Section 230 of the CDA. If you suddenly make websites liable for any mistakes they let through, then you create a huge problem. And claiming that their aggressive moderation implicates them even more only encourages sites to do less moderation in the long run.

But, the publishers don't care about that. Their end goal is clear: as in the EU, they want to force every website to have to buy a blanket license for music. They basically want to do away with the DMCA altogether, then just sit back and collect payments. They want to change the internet almost entirely from a tool for end users to a cash register for music publishers.

There are some other oddities in the lawsuit. It repeatedly tries to claim that Roblox is liable for direct infringement itself, but that theory seems like a stretch. Even the filings admit that the music is all uploaded by users:

Despite Roblox’s written policies, users regularly upload files containing copyrighted music. The act of “uploading” a file to Roblox involves the user making a copy of the file and distributing it to Roblox, where it is then hosted on Roblox’s servers.

To upload an audio file, a user simply opens the Roblox Studio and clicks on a tab marked “Audio,” which then prompts the user to choose a file on their local hard drive, in either .mp3 or .ogg format to be copied and distributed to Roblox’s servers.

It tries to build out the inducement theory by saying that because Roblox encourages developers to use music in their games, and this is the same as encouraging infringement, but that's nonsense. Nothing in what Roblox says encourages infringement. They're just saying that sound and music can enhance a game. Which is clearly true.

Roblox makes the process of uploading infringing music extremely easy for users. Roblox even published an article designed to encourage developers to add music to their games, which explains: “While building a game, it’s easy to overlook the importance of sounds and music.” (Emphasis added).4 That page gives users step-by-step instructions on how to copy and distribute their music files to the Roblox platform.

So what? That's not telling users to infringe. If anything, it's saying "find some music you're able to add to this legally." You'd think that publishers would be happy about that, as it opens up a new line of business where they could license their music, which is what the Roblox exec was talking about at the beginning. But leave it to the greedy publishers to not want to do the hard work here, and instead try to force a big company into a big payment.

Roblox has already put out a statement saying (not surprisingly) that it's "surprised and disappointed" by the lawsuit. It seems likely that it will mount an aggressive defense, and it could be yet another important case in seeing whether or not the legacy music industry is able to chip away at another important aspect of the DMCA, and to force all websites that host third party content to buy blanket licenses.

“As a platform powered by a community of creators, we are passionate about protecting intellectual property rights – from independent artists and songwriters, to music labels and publishers – and require all Roblox community members to abide by our Community Rules,” said the statement.

“We do not tolerate copyright infringement, which is why we use industry-leading, advanced filtering technology to detect and prohibit unauthorised recordings. We expeditiously respond to any valid Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) request by removing any infringing content and, in accordance with our stringent repeat infringer policy, taking action against anyone violating our rules.”

“We are surprised and disappointed by this lawsuit which represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Roblox platform operates, and will defend Roblox vigorously as we work to achieve a fair resolution,” continued Roblox’s statement.

Of course, this is par for the course for the legacy industry -- especially the publishers as lead by the NMPA's David Israelite. They wait for various internet services to get popular, and then rather than figuring out how that helps them, they sue. It's how they constantly kill the golden goose. They've done it with various internet music services, music games, and more. They're currently trying to do it with Twitch and now Roblox as well. They overvalue the music component, and choke off the long term business prospects for these platforms, many of which have music as an ancillary add-on.

It's silly, short-sighted, and anti-culture. In other words, it's the legacy music industry's usual playbook.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, dmca, dmca agent, inducement, publishers, registration, safe harbors
Companies: nmpa, roblox

Twitch Manages To Get Out Some 'Disappointment' With Music Industry Over Latest Round Of DMCA Claims

from the oooooh-disappointment! dept

The saga that has been Twitch's last six or so months is long and somewhat varied, so you should go read up on our historical coverage if you're not familiar with it, but we need to at least preface this post with the origins of how Twitch's bad time began. What has been a tumultuous several months began when it absolutely freaked out over a flood of DMCA takedown notices it received, mostly from the music industry. In response to that, and without warning to its creative community, Twitch nuked a bunch of content from the platform, mostly ignored the outcry from its creators, and did very little to put anything in place that would keep such a disastrous situation from happening again.

So of course it happened again. Twitch recently sent out an email that it had received roughly 1,000 additional DMCA takedown notices, almost all of them again over music playing in the background of recorded Twitch videos.

Said Twitch in its email on Friday: “We are committed to being more transparent with you about DMCA. We recently received a batch of DMCA take down notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers.

“All of the claims are for the VODs and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming. Based on the number of claims we believe these rights holders used automated tools to scan and identify copyrighted music in creators VODs and clips, which means that they will likely send further notices."

Of course they will. Twitch invited them to when it showed itself to be a willing partner in treating Twitch creators like a testing ground for DMCA cluster bombs. There are platforms out there that manage to both treat DMCA requests seriously and also provide some protection, or at least communication, to its users. A few tools for creators aside, Twitch's inaction on behalf of its creative community amounted essentially to greenlighting ever more DMCA takedowns from the music industry. Any surprise at that by the Amazon-owned company is laughable.

But this neutered, throwaway line from that same email is simply maddening.

“This is our first such contact from the music publishing industry (there can be several owners for a single piece of music) and we are disappointed that they decided to send takedowns when we were willing and ready to speak to them about solutions.”

As the old saying goes, be disappointed at the music industry's aggressive copyright enforcement in one hand and spit in the other and see which fills up faster. There is no substance to this disappointment. Of course the music industry has gone kazoo filing DMCA notices at Twitch. Twitch has made it clear its on their side, even making it easier than before to file these notices.

The real disappointment here is that Twitch, and by extension Amazon, has so wildly left its creative community out to dry when it comes to copyright enforcement and DMCA takedowns. It's simply not doing enough.

Filed Under: background, dmca, music industry, streaming
Companies: twitch

Angry Joe Tears Into Twitch Over Its One-Sided Approach To DMCA Takedowns

from the strike-a-match dept

Famed YouTuber and Twitch streamer Angry Joe, or Jose Antonio Vargas, has made it onto Techdirt's pages in the past. True to his name, we've discussed his responses on a couple of intellectual property issues he's suffered through. When Nintendo flagged a video Angry Joe did about Mario Party 10, preventing him from further monetizing the video, he simply and angrily swore off of doing any Nintendo videos in the future, rightly noting that with the decision all the free advertising he'd given Nintendo just disappeared. When CBS blocked a review video he did because the review used 13 seconds of Star Trek: Picard, he took to Twitter to rip them to shreds as well. The point is that when Angry Joe encounters the frustrations many others deal with thanks to overly restrictive intellectual property practices, he doesn't stay silent. He gets... well... angry.

With that in mind, it's probably not all that surprising that the way Twitch is handling its DMCA process has finally caught up to Angry Joe resulting in yet another angry rant. Like many other Twitch creators, Angry Joe has been hit with DMCA notices. As he goes on to note, the process Twitch has designed for how this all works, well, sucks out loud.

Joe highlighted two major issues with Twitch’s system. The first is the strikes on people’s accounts are permanent, and don’t expire after 90 days like YouTube.

“Copyright strikes do not depreciate after a set period of time. If I receive three strikes my channel is terminated, yet I can’t see the strike, I can’t submit a counter-notification, I can’t submit a dispute,” he said in a recent rant. “It can’t get any worse than this.”

This seems both like it should be an easy problem to fix and an easy problem to have completely avoided in the first place. If anyone had bothered to test out Twitch's DMCA process prior to putting it in place, especially from the perspective of someone who had received multiple DMCA notices, it would have been immediately obvious that multiple strikes create a situation where the accused can't even counter the notice.

But the issues with the dispute program go deeper than that.

Joe used an example of a copyright strike he received in February 2021 for a Warzone clip dating back to November 2020, which had the Astronomia song ⁠— popularized by the coffin dance meme ⁠— playing inside the game.

“Here is your DMCA strike. What is the clip? We don’t have a link to the clip. We told you to delete all of your VODs. There is no ‘Dispute’ button,” he explained. “You can’t even review the VODs identified in DMCA notifications in your dashboard, and they don’t plan [on adding that feature] that until December 2021.”

If this all sounds absurd, it very much is. We've made this point before, but Twitch creators are Twitch's biggest and most important asset. Twitch is owned by Amazon. Amazon has virtually unlimited resources. Instead of bringing those resources to bear on all this nonsense, Twitch has instead hung its most important assets out to dry. The roadmap items are half a year away. Creators are getting slammed with these DMCA requests. Twitch is mostly doing nothing other than admiring the failed program it has rolled out.

It should be noted that Angry Joe has a very loud voice when it comes to streamers. If this doesn't get fixed soon, this could lead to a creator exodus.

Filed Under: angry joe, dmca, jose antonio vargas, streaming
Companies: twitch

One Developer Gets GTA3 And Vice City Source Code Un-DMCAd On GitHub

from the rockstar dept

The strange flip-flop by Rockstar Games on being open and cool with its fans continues. By way of context and a bit of throat clearing, recall that Rockstar is both the company that whipped out the ban-hammer on Grand Theft Auto 5 players over the use of mods, and the company that paid out money to a modder that fixed that same games long loading times. In addition, Rockstar is both the company that happily used intellectual property to try to silence a documentary while also being the company that enthusiastically embraced gamers making short films out of GTA footage.

In other words, when it comes to being open with the gaming and modding community surrounding its games, Rockstar has something of a dual personality. The restrictive side of the company is the one that showed up early in 2021 when a bunch of GTA fans managed to reverse engineer the source code for GTA3 and GTA: Vice City.

Deriving the source code through reverse-engineering was a huge milestone for the GTA hacking scene. Players would still need the original game assets to run either classic GTA title, but with accessible source code, modders and devs could begin porting the game to new platforms or adding new features. That’s exactly what’s happened this past year with Super Mario 64.

A week after the code went public on GitHub, Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two Interactive, issued a DMCA takedown claiming that the reversed-engineered source code contained “copyrighted materials owned by Take-Two.” GitHub pulled the fan-derived code and all its related forks.

Entirely too often, that would be the end of the story. Modders and enthusiasts go out and try to do something cool with a Rockstar game, get their hands slapped, and give it all up. That didn't happen in this case. Instead, one developer out of New Zealand, named Theo, issued a counter-notice to GitHub. Theo's notice explained that, no, the code that had been produced did not contain the original work done by Rockstar. Instead, this was all brand new coding done by these fan-developers to produce essentially the same game. As Theo explained, this new code functions like the original source code, but is not identical.

As of now, Theo's fork has been restored to GitHub. And, now, everyone waits to see if Rockstar wants to turn this all into an actual legal battle or not.

While it’s possible Take-Two could challenge Theo’s counter-claim in court at a later date, this is still a nice win for the Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City modding scene. It’s also another reminder that modders, pirates, and fan developers are often the only ones doing the work to keep old games around in an easily playable form.

One would hope Rockstar would see the wisdom in letting this go. It seems hard to imagine how this reverse-engineered code and it allowing modders to try and do new and interesting things with two games that are 20 years old at this point could somehow be a serious threat to Rockstar. More to the point, this is an opportunity for the company to instead embrace and encourage its fans to do these new and interesting things, potentially keeping alive the interest in these games and the franchise as a whole.

As to whether Rockstar will see the wisdom in that, well, for now we wait.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, gta, gta3, source code
Companies: rockstar