Twitch has notified users that another wave of DMCA takedowns is about to hit, to the tune of roughly 1,000 notices.
Many Twitch users play music in the background while they’re streaming. Unfortunately, in many cases, that music is covered by copyright law. Beginning last May, Twitch started seeing a massive surge in the number of takedown requests. The first such large wave was last May, followed by another in October, with Twitch deleting the offending content.
According to an email seen by The Verge, Twitch streamers should prepare for another round.
“We recently received a batch of DMCA takedown notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers,” reads the email. “All of the claims are for VODs, and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming.”
As The Verge points out, Twitch did not initially offer very good tools to help streamers manage their content and deal with the takedowns. The company has since apologized and improved its tools.
Those improvements will hopefully help this takedown will go a bit smoother than the first two.