"Under the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act], service providers must have a repeat infringer policy in place to track and remove those who repeatedly upload infringing content," says Noah Downs, a lawyer specialising in intellectual property and copyright law. Add to that a growing number of game publishers that are adding their music to streaming platforms such as Spotify, and it wouldn't be surprising if companies such as Nintendo started pursuing copyright claims for its music in the same way it previously has done for YouTube. The Second Circuit, however, has undone that logic. Some of those clips being removed date back to 2017, so this new addition to the automated content filtering system isn’t focusing on more recent pieces of content. The law firm, however, says they have no recollection of this and that it doesn’t sound like something they would do. The DMCA was passed in 1998, some 22 years ago. Sync licenses for audiovisual content are required, and game companies need to either waive those rights, proactively, or grant streamers those rights, proactively. The DMCA provides three separate actions that are illegal when it comes to CMI. We know that the new music TOS is already active because over the last week, dozens if not hundreds of streamers have received emails about clips being taken down due to a DMCA regarding unlicensed music. display: none !important; And the process to actually go through and delete all these VODs and clips is not easy at all, and time consuming enough to take an entire day or weekend or week, depending on how much content you have to get through. “As a company committed to supporting creators, we respect, and ask our users to respect, the intellectual property of those who make music and those who own or control music rights.”. ... For more information on the specific changes that have been made and …

To understand why, we must take a deeper look at the law itself and how it’s been applied in the past. "As a result, it's reasonable to speculate that unlicensed or under-licensed video streaming services have become a priority for record labels, music publishers and collective management companies, who rely on those revenue streams. The DMCA is more than notice-and-takedown and a new ruling could drastically change how we look at copyright management information (CMI). While streaming, I told a story about how I fixed my bank account going into the red this month by using a bag of change I've been saving for two years. You cannot intentionally remove or alter CMI.

The Final Fantasy series, for example, features many songs that have been released outside of the game and are owned by Sony Music Entertainment. "There are far too many rumours and conjecture and not enough legitimate information about the situation, especially regarding games that have licenses to incorporate copyrighted music, but not the license to have that music upon a broadcasting platform.". So CMI cases that don’t center around public performance of a work see no change because of this. The only thing that has changed is the music industry is now suddenly enforcing these strikes en masse, leaving some streamers to speculate that the mass strikes in June were nothing more than a flex, and a sign that the worst is yet to come. "On the songs side, they will probably need to do deals with both the music publishers and the collecting societies. While there’s no way to know what the long-term impacts of this ruling will be, it’s going to be an issue to keep an eye on. Several Twitch streamers told CNN Business they won't delete their video clips, even those with copyrighted music, and will wait for Twitch to take action against them. -SPEAK TO A LAWYER. Thankfully, what some see as the ambiguity around Twitch's strike policies has worked in the favour of content creators this time; Twitch has announced that any existing clips containing copyrighted music in relation to the June strikes would be deleted without streamers incurring a penalty.