Streamers Stream TV Shows
Many streamers spent Friday night reacting to Pokimane’s 48-hour ban from Twitch owing to a DMCA infringement after he watched Avatar: The Last Airbender on stream. While one might expect streamers to exercise caution when viewing protected content, many of the most notorious Twitch DMCA offenders dismissed the suspension as a minor inconvenience, accusing those who called them out for pirating content of being snitches or corporate bootlickers.
While Pokimane’s suspension may serve as a warning shot before a wave of additional DMCA bans on major streamers like xQc, DisguisedToast, Hasan, and others, it’s evident that none of them regard their copyright infringement as a huge issue.
Recently, a number of Twitch streamers spoke out in support of the TV viewing meta, even after one of their own, Pokimane, was banned for two days for participating in it. Only a few minutes after the ban, xQc discussed it. xQc essentially passed the block off as a standard DMCA ban, stating that it was automated rather than manual and implying that copyrighted content owners don’t care if streamers consume it. After that, he proceeded to stream Master Chef.
Toast criticized a viewer who said that streamers who violate the DMCA “are not understanding what will happen on a big scale,” adding “oh no, billion-dollar company going to lost out on some money” while making a fake crying motion. Toast claimed during the same show that he started streaming Naruto to see how “far he could push the DMCA business,” but that it has become something he looks forward to.
Hasan, an old standby on the react meta, went after Ludwig particularly, labeling him a snitch and everyone who disagrees with his piracy a “bootlicker.”
On Twitter, Twitch streamer Froste responded to the ban with tips for avoiding bans, such as turning off clips and mirroring the video in OBS to lessen the risk of being detected.
YouTuber SomeOrdinaryGamer swam against the current support for DMCA violations, however, saying “If you get a channel strike watching licensed content on livestream and it gets taken down it really shouldn’t be surprising at all. Like you can’t watch whole TV shows and movies without any consequence.”
Devin Nash, the owner of the Twitch agency, also advised against streaming, claiming that if streamers don’t start taking the DMCA seriously, they will face bans and lawsuits shortly. He went so far as to say that some offenders could face jail time if they knowingly broke the law and profited from it.