Twitch implements YouTube-like system for blocking copyrighted audio | Hacker News Reader

Twitch implements YouTube-like system for blocking copyrighted audio

polygon.com

84 pointspauljonas70 comments

This has led to the logical conclusion of an official Twitch broadcast getting hit with a copyright audio penalty.

https://twitter.com/xkeepah/status/497147167803310080

I'd really like to see Twitch implement a system where streamers could upload separate audio channels for their videos. That way a single channel could be muted for infringement without muting the others. You wouldn't have to lose the audio from the game and player commentary, which is often integral to the video, just because a copyrighted song was playing in the background. This is actually a feature that would have some value to me as a user because I often watch streams where I don't like the music but can't turn it off without losing the caster's commentary which often times the best part.

This does put an extra burden on casters but maybe the value of degrading gracefully in the face of copyright complaints will make it worth it.

The system appears to be blocking copyrighted in-game audio, see [1] and [2].

[1] http://www.twitch.tv/dansgaming/b/550331246 [2] http://www.twitch.tv/adam_ak/b/555134005

I’m surprised this isn’ making more waves here. If you check out a video from almost any user profile that primarily plays PC games[1] or is a speedrunner[2], you’ll find most of their videos muted.

This is not going to end well…

[1] http://www.twitch.tv/kaceytron/c/4761968 [2] http://www.twitch.tv/iateyourpie/b/552446830

It's a big deal, but not nearly as big as it would be if it affected live streams as well. Vods are much less popular. The top videos of all time have around a half million views or less. Top videos this week have around 40000:

http://www.twitch.tv/directory/videos/all http://www.twitch.tv/directory/videos/week

I get the feeling that this does not affect streams currently because if this were turned on for streams, nearly every single stream would be shut off -- I cannot think of a single stream I've watched that does not have ambient music in the background.

It will affect live streams at some point.

Is this speculation or do you have a source? Your comment is stated as a fact but I haven't seen a statement from Twitch about this.

It seems like a logical progression of things, probably just a bit more difficult to implement. I'd guess it's not long til we see it.

Yup. From what I've heard, Youtube already has something like that on their livestreams.

Fascinating moves by the company. They gain users by looking the other way for illegal sports broadcasts which made up the majority of watched content at Justin.tv. Next they pivot to e-sports with Twitch which is a huge success but also plagued by rampant copyright issues (this is the music, but the actual broadcast of some games may be illegal). They look the other way again until they decide to cash out, which means a quick clean up before the billion dollar pay day.

The lesson to VC backed startups here should be to ignore the laws you don't want to bother with until the last possible second (and then some more!), preferably with offer paperwork in your hands. Airbnb has shown that this can scale.

Oh and I forgot to add, the best part is that Twitch is now cleaning up for a pay day from the mother of all law ignoring startups--YouTube. The circle of startups.

Did they actually ignore DMCA requests or violate copyright themselves in any way? Or are you just upset they didn't implement an automated takedown system until now?

They testified to Congress that they were doing their best to fight piracy while at the same time all of the top feeds on Justin.tv were pirated. It was a joke. DMCA requests were not meant to combat live programming--get one down and another pops up. In three hours the point is moot.

Okay, can the announcement of the Google buyout happen already? If it wasn't obvious before, it sure is now...

Also, from the blog post:

"Starting today, Twitch will be implementing technology intended to help broadcasters avoid the storage of videos containing unauthorized third-party audio. "

We're removing content because we want to help broadcasters, yeaaaaa, okay buddies!

A week ago:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/24/googles-1b-purchase-of-twi...

Oh, great. I just was looking around for this yesterday. There were other people that were just as confused about the situation as me though, so I don't feel so bad.

still not an announcement, just an investor who can't keep his mouth shut.

The system is even flagging someone singing.

heres the youtube ver, unmuted http://youtu.be/E3GpMaVdmZo?t=7s twitch archive http://www.twitch.tv/iplaywinner/b/555065724

It's also going to block audio in games like Grand Theft Auto and FIFA which constantly feature copywritten content (in game menus and "radio stations" in game). Maybe they'll develop lists of these songs and not block them?

There's no way to know if this has anything to do with the (as far as I know unconfirmed) rumors of their acquisition by Google, but it's interesting that in e-sports communities the general response to those rumors was "oh well, there goes streaming with background music."

confirmed:

http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/24/googles-1b-purchase-of-twi...

> confirmed sources familiar with the matter.

> Google and Twitch declined comment.

arg. thnx =)

I think it has everything to do with it being acquired by google.

So if you stream a game and listen to a single 3 minute song, 30 minutes of your stream will be muted. This is a fantastic means of protecting content creators!

Twitch AMA tomorrow morning (Thu 7/8)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/2csuhs/twitchtv_will...

On a subreddit they have control over. I won't be surprised if they removed questions that paint them in a negative light.

Generally people doing AMAs just ignore the controversial questions. In this case people want to paint Twitch as the villain but they are just following the law. I expect them to say that if they didn't do this they/streamers could get sued.

What if Google, instead of blocking the stream, just reserved a portion of the revenue generated from that video, for the rights holder, equal to but not greater than the amount needed for traditional over the air licensing?

Alternatively, could they not just use the system as a response to DMCA requests? Mute out the offending portion when a rights-holder complains and leave (probably) the vast majority of videos generating ad revenue, without large portions of the video being muted pro-actively (and therefore basically unwatchable).

I'm not surprised they did and at the same time this just makes it obvious that the way in which copyright for "performances" is done needs to be fixed.

Not sure why the comments here are so negative. People make money from Twitch, and most of them have music playing in the background. You can't just take someone else's work and use it to improve your own without expecting to compensate them.

I hope that the policing of mainstream commercial music use will drive content creators to use music owned by small companies and independents. Twitch should do an integration with Bandcamp or something.

While some people certainly don't think that Twitch should do anything at all, I think most people have a problem with how poorly it seems to be implemented thus far. False positives are the biggest thing that pisses me off about any system like this. Hurting legitimate content creators is not acceptable.

Two counterpoints:

1) Often certain music is played simply as a "cultural reference" -- e.g. making fun of it, having it in the background shortly for dramatic or comical effect, and so on. I would think most classify as fair use; however removals will likely be irrevocable and done with parsimony.

2) Even if the broadcaster would like to give up some of his revenue for copyright, he won't be able to. It just doesn't make much economic sense for large brands to issue small licenses, yet it does make sense to go after small violators since they're allowed to do it en masse.

The point is, viewers lose culturally and copyright holders don't actually gain anything.

I don't see what we "lose culturally" by dropping the use of commercial music. There is a plethora of great, liberally-licensed great music out there.

No, there really isn't, or advertisers wouldn't be buying public performance rights anymore.

Advertisers either want a catchy song people already know, or don't want to attribute the artist. Neither are a problem for streamers.

Some examples of emblematic music that are often used as specific references:

Chariots of Fire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYJzcUvS_NU

Wagner's March of the Valkyries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRU1AJsXN1g

Gonna Fly Now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyvQKTg4T5o

You can't really replace those.

I'll be happy to never hear either the first or third examples ever again. It shouldn't be a big deal to find public domain performances of the out-of-copyright Wagner piece.

Aside from the difficulty of actually obtaining a license, and the false positives and generally heavy-handed implementation... the biggest issue is probably that in-game music and even ambient sound is being targeted, making it impossible to actually carry out the purpose of the site (game streaming) for some games.

I hope that the policing of mainstream commercial music use will drive content creators to use music owned by small companies and independents.

Copyright law is complex and nuanced. Systems like YouTube's and now Twitch's are simple and blunt, and are fundamentally incapable of effectively doing what they're meant to do.

Ustream ran into that when it broadcast the Hugo awards two years ago; its own "protection" system kicked in and killed the live stream because the show, like every awards show, included clips of an award winner... which were detected as copyrighted and blunt-object smacked off the internet because the system can only detect matching signatures, and lacks the ability to recognize matching unlicensed non-fairly-used signatures.

There are already reports coming in of videos being muted on Twitch because the built-in, licensed soundtrack of the game itself is audible in videos of someone playing the game, and it seems from another comment in this thread[1] that one of Twitch's own official broadcasts got muted because the system could only recognize "copyrighted", not "copyrighted and used legally".

This is a doomed project, and it could doom Twitch, and if you really do care about artists being compensated, you should not be in favor of things which make that cause seem so odious and stupid.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8145381

A lot of games, the game themselves, use popular music as part of the soundtrack. So streaming those games can get the entire video muted.

Some interesting bits about this system and how it's implemented:

Blocking is implemented using volume control in the flash player. The flash player has multiple bugs that currently undo the blocking.

Twitch already has an API used for playing VODs and streams on devices that don't run Flash, and as a result of volume-control-based muting, muting does not apply to any of these devices (or software using the API, of which there is plenty).

Worse still, not only does muting not apply to the API, but ads don't show up either. So muting will (at least in the short term) drive users to playback via API in order to avoid it, and coincidentally reduce ad impressions. Ideally Twitch will address this in the future by muting the actual VODs at the file level instead of in the player.

The Content ID detection database they're using (from a third party, Audible Magic) includes many game soundtracks and other licensed pieces of audio that are used legally by actual games. Twitch calls this out in their announcement, so they knew it would be happening. As a result, VODs that merely contain playback of a real game end up muted - one of the examples going around the web right now is footage of Fallout 3, because FO3's soundtrack contained some licensed songs from the 50s/60s that are in Audible Magic's database. [3]

Suppressing copyrighted music from your streams is complicated further by the fact that the database is stated to contain ambient audio and not just music; many games do not have a separate volume slider for ambient audio, even if they have one for music. Suppressing that audio may require muting the game entirely.

Some games also tie licensed music into game-relevant content; Fallout 3 is one of them - the in-game radio has narration and dialogue from plot-relevant characters mixed in between the songs. Muting the audio or not using the in-game radio would actually hinder the experience of playing the game in a measurable way as a result.

Services like Audible Magic also have a long track record of asserting incorrect ownership for content. Many indie game developers & musicians were hit by an erroneous banwave as a result of this technology last year due to a shady service called TuneCore asserting ownership of music published by their customers - despite their customers not authorizing this behavior. [1]

Because Content ID takedowns on YouTube (and now Twitch) do not operate through the legal system or the DMCA hierarchy, there is no legal recourse available to content creators or rightsholders in this scenario, and the companies that have deals with YT/Twitch are free to siphon ad money or take down content whenever and wherever they like. With DMCA takedown notices there is a counter-notice mechanism, but since these content ID systems are based on private agreements between companies, no such mechanism exists.

The service twitch uses charges per-request for content identification so this likely influenced the decision to mute 30-minute blocks instead of at a smaller level of granularity. At the size of Twitch's content database they may be paying a significant amount of money to Audible Magic for this service. [2]

[1] http://www.vg247.com/2013/12/18/99-of-youtube-gaming-channel...

[2] https://www.audiblemagic.com/copyright-compliance-pricing/

[3] http://www.twitch.tv/dansgaming/b/550331246

The erroneous flagging seems to still be going on.

https://twitter.com/Totalbiscuit/status/497168915651637249

Crypt of the Necrodancer devs saying the music in their game is getting peoples videos flagged, they have no idea why its on Audiblemagic

From the musician and right owner himself :

https://twitter.com/dannyBstyle

nobody but me has the authority to ask for a takedown of @NecroDancerGame music on twitch. if you're getting takedowns please let me know!

I have not asked for any streams of @NecroDancerGame to be taken down. I don't understand who could have requested they be muted.

thanks for the links to the muted @NecroDancerGame VODs. consulting with my lawyer, I will sort it out and let everyone know ASAP. <3

Crazy idea: Can't a streamer just setup their own live streaming audio server (i.e. Shoutcast and Icecast) and tell users to listen to that while watching their Twitch? This way, their videos can get archived later for on-demand use and the livestream isn't affected /too/ much.

I've always thought that streaming sites should provide a convenience layer for this.

Yea but that's a huge hassle for the users and especially those who hop from channel to channel.

I think it would be difficult to keep the audio and video in sync if they were separate streams. The delay for Twitch streams can be unpredictable.

If you could get the time difference to within the duration of an average song, it wouldn't be so bad. It would be messed up if the streamer tries to sing along, but that's about it. I think the main reason viewers like streams with music is just to share in the streamer's tastes and perhaps discover new music.

Ah yup that makes sense, for some reason I was thinking the shoutcast stream would entirely handle the streamers audio, rather than just the music portion of the audio (which makes a lot more sense...)

Another reasons is that music makes it less awkward, most streamers aren't talking 100% of the time and there will be awkward silences. Also, for me at least, the addition of music makes it more of a casual viewing experience. I'll often have a twitch stream on my second monitor while working and it's not distracting at all.

Anyone know how this system works? It may be possible to exploit the algorithm to find small transformations that disrupt it's ability to identify audio. This has been shown to be possible in some neural net based systems, for example.

Why is this bad? They ought to pay for the music like every one else. Twitch isn't a free radio system.

Cue the mass exodus to other services that don't attempt to police content proactively.

And if any of those services ever get as big as twitch they will be forced to as well.

Precisely, the problem isn't Twitch implementing this. It's the copyright system that forces them to do this.

No, it really isn't. Under the DMCA they are free from liability if they just sit there and respond to DMCA requests as they come.

Someone could set up a bot to send DMCA requests under the same algorithm, but they'd be guilty of perjury if they lied.

That stops being realistic when you get to the size where you have thousands of DMCA requests coming in a day.

Won't happen, example: youtube.

YouTube didn't have much competition when it happened. Twitch is strong, but not as dominant as YouTube was. There exist alternative services (HitBox, Azubu,...).

There wasn't much competition when Twitch.tv spawned from Justin.tv either. However, that's not the point. The point is the majority of the users are entrenched in one service. You can stream from whichever you want, but if the audience keeps going to twitch, you're stuck publishing at twitch.

The majority of Twitch users follow only a few streamers. If the streamers migrate, a substantial portion of their viewers will follow.

Contrast with YouTube: most people view videos from a wide variety of uploaders. If one or two uploaders leave, the viewers will stay where they are.

Some streamers have tried going to other services, but they lack the brand recognition.

Chicken-and-egg once again.

This doesn't exist because as soon as those grow enough, they will be forced to police content proactively.

Until those services get popular and grow up like Twitch. Then they too will have to play by the big boy rules.

Google bought Twitch. They are not an independent entity. This is Google doing this.

Where would you go? Every centralized service will eventually run into this problem of contributory copyright infringement.

If you truly want to change the playing field, free us from the shackles of copyright, and bring us to a new world of open creativity and sharing, your best bet is to invent some sort of exclusively peer-to-peer video sharing platform so centralized government and their dogs won't be able to kill the entire service by taking down one entity.

Eventually. At which point, there may be a move to yet another service.

It has begun already actually, Hitbox is apparently getting a huge influx of new users [1], their site [2] is not responding.

[1] https://twitter.com/hitboxliveHelp/status/497150137933000705

[2] http://www.hitbox.tv/

Wouldn't it be easier for them to just buy an unlimited license for "Darude - Sandstorm"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com