Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, in an Reddit AMA posted yesterday, shared his thoughts on the controversial but clearly irritating policy of automatically muting archived Twitch videos that match third-party audio.
Muting original in-game music is a mistake. We're working on it if something slipped through the gaps. Ambient music (playing Britney Spears in the background) is not allowed on Twitch unless you've licensed it for that purpose.When there are mistakes we consider them bugs and are trying to fix it.
Games are licensed to be broadcast by the game companies, usually in a public manner. Music is not. It's as simple as that, unfortunately.
This auto-muting feature has flagged multiple videos with false positives, with developers like Ryan Clark, creator of Crypt of the NecroDancer, getting his own content being muted. Most content creators agree that Content-ID is one of most invasive methods of ensuring copyrighted content is protected.
Even if the content creators get permission to stream music they have licenses for, there's little to no way that the automated system (in this case, Audible Magic) knows that. These "guilty until proven innocent" systems are a nightmare for everyone, as they can lead to de-monetization and copyright strikes.
They flag the video and then the streamer needs to go through the appealing process every time it happens (again). And sometimes, getting evidence that you have a license doesn't mean anything and they'll reject the appeal. We've been through this on YouTube many times. Let's just say this situation is something that rhymes with a "blustercuck."
