SAN FRANCISCO -- Twitch is acknowledging the fault of the ways when handling the ongoing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) controversy. For several years, streamers were put at risk of losing their accounts due to playing licensed music during their broadcasts. However, streamers aren't out of the woods yet. The gamer-oriented streaming platform is strongly recommending not playing licensed music during streams. This is due to ongoing negotiations between Twitch, which is owned by Amazon, and record labels.
In a detailed blog post and a subsequent email sent out Wednesday, the company explains DMCA after many streamers would hit with takedown notices en mass during the summer. They would explain that it was not a major issue previously.
"Until May of this year, streamers received fewer than 50 music-related DMCA notifications each year on Twitch," the company states. "Beginning in May, however, representatives for the major record labels started sending thousands of DMCA notifications each week that targeted creators’ archives, mostly for snippets of tracks in years-old Clips."
When a license holder issues a takedown request, a platform must comply with the takedown before initiating a review process. In this scenario, this would be Twitch in quite the predicament.
The mass takedown requests over the summer would create a domino effect. Streamers would suddenly find several and as many as hundreds of years-old Clips with flags for violating DMCA.

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