In a post in its official blog, Twitch revealed that it will be implementing technology that will regulate the unauthorized use of copyrighted music on the videos on demand that can be accessed on the website.
Twitch is a video platform and social community for gamers worldwide, receiving monthly visitors of 55 million. The website allows users to connect with each other through broadcasting, watching and chatting about the games that they are playing from anywhere in the world.
Twitch has forged a partnership with Audible Magic, a company that works closely with the mainstream music industry, to scan all VODs in Twitch.
Audible Magic will be scanning the in-game and ambient music used by VODs for tracks that are copyrighted by the company's clients.
VODs that will be found to contain copyrighted music will have sections of the video muted, along with displaying a pop-up notifying the problem with the VOD. Past VODs that will be found to contain copyrighted music will still be exportable, but they will be muted.
The technology of Audible Magic will scan the VODs in blocks of thirty minutes, with muting affecting the entire block in which violations will be found. The progress bar of the VOD will turn red for the length of time affected by the muting due to the presence of copyrighted music.
Twitch will only currently scan VODs, as there is no technology tapped yet to monitor live broadcasts for copyrighted music.
Twitch, however, admits that the technology of Audible Magic is not perfectly accurate. As such, scanning results may return incorrect hits or miss out on copyrighted music on videos but are not included in Audible Magic's database.
Video owners that believe that their content has been wrongly muted may send Twitch a counter-notification that follows the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provisions. Music copyright holders, on the other hand, may contact Twitch with a notification of claimed infringement so that the violating video can be muted.
"If you wish to include music in your VODs, please remember that you are responsible for clearing all such rights (this includes ambient music that may be playing in the background while you are broadcasting)," Twitch writes in its blog post, adding that there are free sources for music such as Creative Commons, SongFreedom and Jamendo.
The move by Twitch comes along with rumors that Google's YouTube may be contemplating to acquire the gamer video service. If the rumors are true, Google's decision to buy out Twitch will be made easier with copyright issues already being addressed.
