It's worth noting that Twitch partially became popular because it wasn't YouTube, and gamers could stream without content restrictions (e.g. copyright and region)
Miraculously, this could end up making YouTube comments even worse.
I play an MMORPG called Runescape which has millions of players, I've been playing it since I was 12 and now I'm 21. I stream on Twitch once every few days and frequently have 1,000+ people watching me, subscribing, following and most importably putting eyeballs on Twitch's adverts (which is one of the largest concurrent none-featured community.)
If this happens I lose my anonymity (because Google+) which protects my account details from being stolen. If this happens I lose the ability to stream while playing music in the background, my followers even have the ability to request songs during the stream using an automated service, where does this leave me with regards to copyright then?
Even worse than this though is that if this happens, Google will in some way fundamentally change a service which I and my followers love to use - a service which they don't understand.
I speak for myself as a well known member of this community: If Google buys Twitch, Twitch will die.
I'm really not sure why some of the other comments here are focusing on the playing of music on the stream. Obviously they've never watched someone gaming on twitch. Nobody watches twitch for the music someone is playing. People watch it to see other people play and talk about games. Music may be in the background but is often obscured by dialog and game sounds. It's not even close to the quality a youtube video for music supplies.
Music isn't obviously not the focus of any Twitch stream, but nevertheless, people are breaking copyright laws by playing copyrighted music on their streams. And if Twitch becomes a part of YouTube, they might have to crack down on copyrighted music on streams, due to pressure from the copyright holders.
Moving away from the music for a second, the public streaming of gameplay doesn't constitute copyright infringement? I'm no legal expert but it seems to me a bit of a stretch to call it fair use - especially for single player games.
Music is a good differentiation between streams. When I used to watch a lot of LoL streams that was one of my deciding factors on who to watch. Why watch someone playing all top 40 stuff when there's someone else playing music I enjoy?
Because 90% of all music enjoyed by most people is under copyright and searching for music not under copyright that you can listen to and genuinely enjoy is not anybody's idea of a good time.
Nobody wants to worry about this stuff.
As long as the purpose of the stream is not just streaming music i don't see the problem however I'm certain the MPAA and RIAA would not agree.
Bear in mind, copyrighted music doesn't just mean "Stuff from the top 40s". Music that's in the soundtrack of a game is under copyright.
So the answer to the question "Why do you have to use copyrighted background music for streaming of a game" is "Because playing a game with the volume at zero kind of sucks".
edit: And obviously that's not the entirety of the concern; there are definitely some streamers who play essentially radio music (or anime music or whatever) over the soundtrack on broadcast. I agree that stuff like that doesn't necessarily need to happen. But using a broad brush to say "No broadcasting copyright music on twitchtube" is both not a good idea, and exactly what people are worried will happen.
To be honest, you're living on borrowed time. The only reason twitch would allow this is because it has flown under the radar so far. It's not a reasonable expectation that you can forever have a service that will let you stream copyrighted material to people.
If they are good or not, the laws exist. Once Twich is under Google's umbrella, they will be pressure by the content owners to enforce those copyrights. Maybe that's not happening today because Twich's community is smallish (compared to Youtube) but once they are "integrated" into the copyright notification/enforcement framework, end of story.
Just because contracts are difficult to get doesn't mean you have free rein to do whatever you want. There are plenty of meaningful solutions to this "problem". Don't play music at all. Play music you are allowed to play (be it paid or just music that allows streamers to use it). It may not be what people want to hear, but obviously the music is of value to shanelja's audience as they requesting songs.
Get a license with something like ASCAP[1]. I think that's what most businesses using music in a public setting do.
Legally using copyrighted music is not exactly an impossible task. I mean, it's basically the entire business of some radio stations, and some stations are quite small.
Now, is it worth the effort and cost for a Twitch stream? It depends on how much value the music brings. There's also CC or royalty-free music, if a streamer just wants some music playing.
I think it's important to take notice that Twitch's recent problems (the buffering problem, chat problems, the delay in general) are problems with their ability to cater to the big tournaments which causes me to really not be all that surprised if this turns out to be true.
The ways they've handled the tournaments have really disillusioned many streamers. I don't know if there's any better way for them to have dealt with the scaling problems they faced as I can only imagine the work that must go into supporting a live stream, with real time chat, that has 100k+ viewers (and for some of the bigger tournaments that's a small number). Something like a 30s+ delay in the stream makes it very difficult to have real interactions between the streamer and the viewers which is particularly bad for smaller streams. For the big guys it doesn't matter as much since their interaction is less back-and-forth and more broadcaster in style and there's absolutely no interaction with the tournaments.
The point is that if this is true it really doesn't surprise me at all. And whether or not it is I think there's definitely an opening for some serious competition to Twitch by making a service that is essentially an exact copy but from a business focus standpoint caters more towards the small-to-medium sized streamer and their audience.
Funnily, I remember talking a tech who worked on scaling at Twitch last year, just after the change to the new system. His biggest gripe was with how Twitch struggled with peering agreements, as European ISP's refused the terms Twitch required to get decent performance, so users suffered. Reminds me of the Netflix-Comcast debacle.
Many of the popular streamers on Twitch are homegrown. Their success can be directly attributed to the Twitch ecosystem. They would likely take a big hit if they switched platforms.
Buffering and delays got worse with the launch of PS4 streaming, they're not just due to tournaments. It is true that tournaments are a 'worst case' for them.
To clarify, it's not as though Twitch is a magical world free from copyright restrictions. However, youtube's copyright enforcement system is extremely aggressive, overzealous, and a hassle for content creators to deal with. Youtube had a huge flood of takedowns for let's play videos due to mostly bureaucratic reasons rather than actual, legitimate copyright violations, for example. And that is what people are avoiding.
While I do see this being an excellent acquisition for YouTube if true, I do agree. I don't see how YouTube could reconcile it's copyright stance with how Twitch fundamentally works.
IF this is true, I would think a lot of due diligence and legal counsel was discussed before moving forward. Especially with a deal this size. And if that's the case, perhaps YouTube would be adopting Twitch's less restrictive copyright policies. Because otherwise, what else would YouTube get out of Twitch?
Ha. Your naiveté is cute. This deal is all about buying out the competition. It's not about streaming. Youtube could have streaming if they wanted to, without the 1B.
Youtube has streaming. Also probably a bit different target audience and market. Plus, it's likely that they'll just make the sadfucked G+ a requirement and be done with it, no mucking with what works.
If people aren't able to continue streaming their favourite game on Twitch after the acquisition, they will go somewhere else and Youtube will have gained nothing from the deal. It makes absolutely zero sense to buy out a competitor just to drive all their users to a different competitor.
Microsoft did this all the time to protect it's Office, and it worked. I do not think this is meaningless, not very efficient, but gigants can sacrifice efficiency if it helps save their primary revenue.
I was thinking more of the market and audience of Twitch. Technology is not a barrier for Google/YouTube. And they could certainly vie for the Twitch audience with a similar product. But Twitch definitely has a head start.
So whether it be for removing a competitor and/or entering a new market, my point is I think a company like Google would have considered copyright issues before doing something like this.
It also doesn't fit their app store policy at all, particularly in light of the recent takedowns aimed at guides or utilities for PC games in absence of any copyright claims.
YouTube is a Juggernaut. But Twitch is not, and most of its audience is very young and focused on technology, manly video games. They will move fast. Create the next Twitch now. Wait for YouTube to force content restrictions on the old Twitch. Profit.
This could backfire hard, if youtube try to enforce same restrictions to streamers as they enforce to youtube videos, a lot of famous streamers would just jump out to another alternatives like azubu for example.
Agreed. I'm interested to how they will implement copyright issues too.
What I'm also worried about is design changes. YouTube had some poor decisions in this domain and if Twitch experiences stuff like this, it may turn to a rather unpleasant platform.
At least in the Starcraft II scene, Azubu seems to be the new player on the block. They must have some connections or be making some sweet deals, because in a relatively short time they've got several well known streamers using them.
On a back of the napkin calculation, how much outgoing throughput would one need to be able to stream to ten clients directly on say 720p (~30 frames per second)?
I was wondering if it would be possible to create a set up where people can stream from home without any third party in between. Is that even possible for larger audiences?
Slightly off topic but If I remember right, about a question of viability someone at Justin.tv (I guess now twitch) said (this is about four years ago) that playing like a thirty second ad clip can more than cover their operational cost of streaming for an hour. I guess what I wanted to hear from that was that streaming is cheap. Scale probably matters a lot though.
You'd want to do something like HLS which can use standard HTTP but not directly to someone's home. You'd need some sort of CDN or cloud intermediary to handle the load.
Or some sort of peer-to-peer Popcorn time style (Bittorrent Live?[1]) that can distribute the load across all viewers.
Hmm... "Twitch-Time" may be an interesting way to resurrect that service.
This is the kind of thing that MBONE (Multicast Backbone) [1] was created to handle. Unfortunately, due to security concerns over multicast IP and no dedicated support for multiple parties, it died shortly after being birthed.
My thought was to piggyback off of web rtc and other free software projects already available just to learn more about it. I'll be pretty happy to just get it working so two clients can watch a stream. I was already looking to learn something this summer so this should be a nice place to start. Thanks!
At this point it's probably a better move to build and then sell/license a streaming service directly to the game publishers. If they provide a streaming system, they can control the copyright directly.
Large companies tend to err on the side of taking down more than they legally "have to". I know of YouTube videos that were taken down because of copyright claims that were outright false (that is, the entity making the claim didn't even have any rights to the material that was allegedly being infringed). There's a lot of room to be more lenient than YT and still on the right side of the law.
YouTube recently launched a new streaming platform. I don't think it has those restrictions anymore. Their problem has been that they haven't been able to compete with Twitch's community.
I agree. I hope, YouTube does not change much on the surface. Streamers and viewers are like deer in the night. A flash like integration into Google Accounts would most likely scare them away. I'm sceptical.
First of all, you need Google+ in order to use Youtube (very hard without it) while people just want to watch streams, they don't care about failed social networks. This is why twitch was great.
Miraculously, this could end up making YouTube comments even worse.