The much-hyped boxing match between veteran pro Floyd Mayweather and YouTube personality Logan Paul was predicted to attract tons of viewers, and it certainly did that. Early estimates say that there were over 600,000 pay-per-view buys of the Showtime match, which doesn’t include views garnered from streaming platforms. With so much interest from the public, some Twitch streamers decided to create content surrounding theMayweather vs. Paul fight, but quickly ran into DMCA concerns.
There are three typical actions from Twitch when addressing DMCA concerns: a takedown, a ban, and a strike. The most common of these is aDMCA takedown, which often deletes the offending content. Sometimes this may be followed up with a ban, which could potentially last up to 24 hours. A strike is the most severe of the three, which is essentially a confirmation of copyright infringement. Twitch’s rules surrounding these three actions have confused many streamers in the past, but Twitch is required by law to act on any copyright claim issued by other companies.
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So when Showtime submitted a DMCA concern for streamer CDNThe3rd’s channel due to his alleged streaming of the Mayweather vs. Paul fight,Twitchfollowed up with a takedown and temporary ban. However, according to CDNThe3rd, his channel actually took special precautions to avoid breaking copyright law. His channel occasionally features “Viewage Fight Nights” where personalized graphics are created to simulate the logistics of an event (rounds, timer, score, etc.) without ever actually showing the event.
CDNThe3rd says he informed viewers where they could purchase the Mayweather vs. Paul fight and made sure no illegal links to footage of the fight were shared in his channel’s chat, but his planned 10+ hour stream was stilltaken down by Twitchafter just 3 hours. Following this, he was banned from using his channel for 16 hours until the ban was lifted yesterday evening. CDNThe3rd believes that Showtime failed to properly investigate his stream and issued an uninformed DMCA notice to Twitch, and he hopes that Twitch will figure out a system to reverse false takedowns/bans quicker in the future.
Twitch streamers have been calling for better transparency concerning DMCA rules for a while now, and although Twitch did release a lengthy statement on DMCA takedowns back in November 2020, there is still a lot of unease in the streaming community. There seem to be no repercussions for companies issuing false DMCA notices, and Twitch isn’t always diligent to restore streamers quickly. CDNThe3rd claims that a streaming affiliate, Buckviker1, is still currently banned for doing the same thing he did, and he hopes Buckviker1’s ban will be lifted shortly.
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