Twitch Warns of New DMCA Takedowns, Next Ban Wave Likely Coming Soon

Twitch's DMCA problems regarding claims and takedowns filed against content creators for instances of music played during streams appear to be resurfacing again to indicate another wave of bans is coming. A cautionary email sent out by Twitch for the sake of transparency indicated as much by saying that there'd been over 1,000 claims from music publishers recently filed. Twitch streamers are responding in kind by deleting some or all of their old videos so as not to get hit with any sorts of takedowns or bans whenever those notices start coming through.

Esports consultant Rod Breslau shared an email this week that many other content creators and Twitch users received, too, which warned of a new wave of DMCA claims. The email from Twitch indicated that music publishers had used automated tools to search for potential DMCA claims.

Twitch sent out a new email during the night stating they've received 1,000 more DMCA takedown claims from record labels, likely before we see another ban wave. the music industry once again trying their hardest to make the internet a miserable experience pic.twitter.com/DySLlx4YMI

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) May 28, 2021

"We are committed to being more transparent with you about DMCA," Twitch said in the email. "We recently received a batch of DMCA takedown notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers. All of the claims are for VODs, and the vast majority target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming. Based on the number of claims, we believe these rights holders used automated tools to scan and identify copyrighted music in creators' VODs and Clips, which means that they will likely send further notices."

Around the time the email went out, Twitch content creators began sounding off on Twitter about recent DMCA actions. Twitch streamer Brendan "Sneegsnag" Thro said on Twitter he'd received a DMCA strike on a 2019 video that was no longer viewable to the public because it briefly played part of Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams." It was also reported that fellow Twitch streamer Nicholas "NICKMERCS" Kolcheff deleted all of his VODs from his channel presumably to avoid these sorts of actions. A quick look at his channel shows that the videos are indeed gone except for the ongoing stream and clips created from that stream.

Twitch said it was "disappointed" in the music publishers sending these takedowns over when the streaming platform is willing to talk about solutions. The issues like this latest one have been going on for a while now, however, and Twitch streamers themselves are likely more disappointed that a solution hasn't been found.