Poker Streamers Worried After Twitch Receives Influx of Takedown Requests

Poker players are among hundreds of thousands of Twitch streamers who have been warned that their channels could be at risk after mass takedown requests for music copyright breaches.

The PokerStars Team Online pro is just one of those likely to be affected by the latest onslaught, which comes on the back of serious YouTube problems for poker players earlier this year.

Poker became the most-watched Twitch TV genre for the first time last month, Lex Veldhuis’ livestreamed SCOOP run topping the streaming charts.

The latest blow was explained by musicbusinessonline:

‘Twitch is legally required to comply with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests served by rights-holders (for example a record label) or by an entity on behalf of a rightsholder, such as the RIAA.’

Amazon-owned Twitch responded to the requests by emailing multiple streamers, warning them that they could be perma-banned from the site if they did not comply with the requests.

With streamers often having thousands of videos in their archive, they are being left with little choice but to delete them, the task of sifting through for copyright breaches virtually impossible.

Despite its massive success and $multi-billion owners, Twitch have yet to implement options for streamers to somehow pay for copyrighted music use.

Instead it appears they are working on a way to help streamers delete their content.