It's been several months since YouTube and Twitch reportedly reached an agreement for the former to acquire the latter. While the rumor remains unconfirmed, recent changes to Twitch's functionality and copyright policing imply that there's truth to the idea - and the end results aren't particularly good.
First, there's the loss of archival broadcast footage. Previously, Twitch could save your streams indefinitely. Now, streams will be saved as highlights, assuming streams are two hours long or less, while full streams will be saved for 14 days if you're not a paying subscriber, 60 days if you are.
In and of itself, this isn't a huge change and the company appears to be restructuring its work to better serve customers. In the blog post addressing this issue, Twitch notes that 80% of its full streams are never watched by anyone - which seems rather lonely, come to think of it.
New copyright restrictions ripping audio out of streams
Of greater concern is Twitch's decision to adopt the automated Audible Magic Automated Content Recognition (ACR) service. Like YouTube's controversial Content ID, Audible Magic scans video feeds and, if it locates infringing content, mutes the video in 30 minute chunks. A few seconds of music playing in the background means a 30 minute audio mute for that section of the video.
Like YouTube's Content ID service, Audible Magic is notorious for false positives and improper allegations of theft. Not only does the service lock on to music playing in the background of a stream, it's been known to lock on to an audio feed from the game itself. If your game relies on copyrighted music it can have its audio ripped out - even if the game studio paid for the legal right to embed the audio in the first place.
This is the bridge too far scenario of the content scanning industry and Twitch, like YouTube, puts the burden entirely on the consumer to fight back against such claims by filing a DMCA counterclaim. Just doing so puts flags on accounts and can lead to banning in the long run. Twitch's blog post notes that 'If you wish to include music in your VODs, please remember that you are responsible for clearing all such rights (this includes ambient music that may be playing in the background while you are broadcasting).'
Sure, that makes sense if the user is playing their own custom soundtrack of copyrighted material - but how on Earth is anyone supposed to clear the use of music from Fallout 3? The game streamer lacks any standing to negotiate such an agreement and Bethesda already paid for the licenses.
Transforming Twitch into YouTube just duplicates why people left YouTube
Underlying all of this upheaval is a simple fact: People left YouTube for Twitch because YouTube had implemented practices that were directly hostile to game streaming. Now, Twitch is adopting similar methods, which is virtually guaranteed to lead to similar results.
What's particularly infuriating about this issue is that these ACR systems could be adopted to also scan whitelists or valid uses of content. Fallout 3 is a great example of a title that uses songs you'll rarely find pirated or passed around on torrent links. By cross-referencing the audio track against the description and possibly in-game ambient sounds, an ACR could plausibly identify whether an audio stream was likely to qualify as fair use or not. An engine that can identify 'I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire' can also identify the distinctive overlay of laser fire, ghoul howls, or Super Mutant attacks.
The persistent refusal of Yahoo and now Twitch to mandate a copy protection system that performs more than the stupid, automated minimum is a major problem for any nascent game streaming service looking to break into an increasingly lucrative market. These latest moves have angered a number of Twitch users, but we'll have to wait and see if that translates into a loss of market share or brand dilution.
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