What happens when a virtual streamer doesn’t own her body?

I think it’s hyperbole though. She owns her own body. The headline should probably read “what happens when a virtual streamer is involved in copyright dispute over their purchased streaming avatar”

As noted by aplummer (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25621023), the “body” in the title is the virtual body, that is a 3D model including the animation rig.

The origin of the dispute is that the artist that made the model for her claims that, after she bought the model, he did some extra work that she did not pay:

> The artist said on Twitter that he stopped working with Melody earlier this year, claiming that she failed to pay him for “months of support” that included “free assets, fixes, and project management.” He then asked her to sign a “service deal” for ongoing support, which she refused. “She didn’t pay for the service deal nor the work I did leading up to it. So I said bye,” DigitrevX wrote.

> Melody claims she offered to pay for the “free” work, but DigitrevX refused. He continued to be “rude” and “insulting,” Melody wrote, so she eventually cut ties. “I finally blocked him after he kept saying shitty things about me, and now he has resorted to trying to de-platform me, starting with twitch,” Melody wrote.

> paying 5k$ for what is effectively is a low-res human base There are free alternatives which allow zero-skill 3D modeling, e.g. https://github.com/makehumancommunity/makehuman

What I find absolutely fascinating is how easy it is to deplatform someone on Twitch using copyright and DMCA. Should the assumption be that Twitch is no different than YouTube or any other platform in which people use to make money: You do so only at the platforms acquiesce.

What a ridiculous dispute. One of the IP lawyers quoted in the article nailed it:

> “Clearly you’re not going to pay someone to buy artwork that you never intend to use.”