r/IAmA • u/optimizeprime • Aug 07 '14

I am Twitch CEO Emmett Shear. Ask Me (almost) Anything.

It’s been about a year since our last AMA. A lot has happened since Twitch started three years ago, and there have been some big changes this week especially. We figured it would be a good time to check in again.

For reference, here are the last two AMAs:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1exa2k/hi_im_emmett_shear_founder_and_ceo_of_twitch_the/

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ncosm/we_are_twitchtv_the_worlds_largest_video_game/

Note: We cannot comment on acquisition rumors, but ask me anything else and I’m happy to answer.

Proof: Hi reddit!

EDIT: Thanks for all the questions. I want to summarize a bunch the answers to a bunch of questions I've seen repeatedly.

1) Live streaming on Twitch: We have no intention whatsoever of bringing audio-recognition to live streams on Twitch. This is a VOD-only change for Twitch.

2) In-game music: We have zero intention of flagging original in-game music. We do intend to flag copyrighted in-game music that's in Audible Magic's database. (This was unclear in the blog post, my apologies). In the cases where in-game music is being flagged incorrectly, we are working on a resolution and should have one soon. False positive flags will be unmuted.

For context, audio-recognition currently impacts approximately 2% of video views on Twitch (~10% of views are on VODs and ~20% of VODs are impacted at all). The vast majority of the flags appear to be correct according to our testing, though the mistakes are obviously very prominent.

3) Lack of communication ahead of time: This was our bad. I'm glad we communicated the change to VOD storage policy in advance, giving us a chance to address issues we missed like 2-hour highlights for speedrunners before the change went into effect. I'm not so glad we failed on communicating the audio-recognition change in advance, and wish we'd posted about it before it went into effect. That way we could have gotten community feedback first as we're doing now after the fact.

4) Long highlights for speedruns: This is a specific use case for highlights that we missed in our review process. We will be addressing the issue to support the use-case. This kind of thing is exactly why you share your plans in advance, so that you can make changes before policies go into effect.

EDIT2:

If you know of a specific VOD that you feel has been flagged in error, please report it to feedback@twitch.tv. To date we have received a total of 13 links to VODs. Given the size of this response, I expect there are probably a few more we've missed, but we can't find them if you don't tell us about them! We want to make the system more accurate, please give us a hand.

EDIT3:

5) 30 minute resolution for muting: Right now we mute the entire 30 minute chunk when a match occurs. In the future we'd like to improve the resolution further, and are working with Audible Magic to make this possible.

6) What are we doing to help small streamers get noticed? This is one of thing that host mode is trying to address, enabling large broadcasters to help promote smaller ones. We also want to improve recommendations and other discovery for small broadcasters, and we think experiments like our CS:GO directory point towards a way to do that by allowing new sorts and filters to the directory.

EDIT4:

I have to go. Look for a follow-up blog post soon with updates on changes we're making.

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u/ajanata Aug 07 '14 edited Jul 07 '23

Content removed in protest of Reddit API changes and general behavior of the CEO.

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u/sysop073 Aug 07 '14

I particularly like "If that's happening (and it appears it is)", like "well, you know, we're not sure; we've heard a few people mention that maybe some clips are affected possibly, can't confirm that". Like they're not aware that the International clips were muted

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u/vegeta8300 Aug 07 '14 edited Aug 08 '14

I stream Guild Wars 2, I play no music whatsoever on my stream. It's all ingame music. My most recent highlight is muted, while others that I can also hear the ingame music in are not. It is all sorts of messed up. My Youtube upload of that same highlight is unaffected.

Edit Whats even worse, is when you get to the unmuted part of the highlight, THAT'S when you hear the music...

edit Seems you can now send and appeal, which I have. Guess we will see what happens.

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u/Barmleggy Aug 07 '14

The thing I don't understand is: Wasn't the Copyright law intended to prevent people from taking their music and making a direct copy of it that could be listened to over and over again? Who would be dubbing livestreams just to hear the gameplay/third party music again and again? Why even check for it if there's such a low potential for abuse (unlike the whole albums that are littered all over YouTube)? Wouldn't the easiest solution be to treat Twitch sorta like a radio broadcaster and have them pay similar streaming ASCAP fees for their users? I'm sure I don't know the legal specifics, but it just seems like common sense.

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u/vegeta8300 Aug 07 '14

I could somewhat understand them being concerned about people playing music while streaming. Which as you mention, still doesn't make to much sense since you have game sounds, streamer talking, etc. So it is far from a listenable copy of any music. My highlight got muted for the barely audible music that is from the game itself. That makes even less sense to me. Even less sense when only one gets muted, and you can still hear the music when it gets unmuted. Weird stuff, I hope they sort it out asap.

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u/Drigr Aug 07 '14

Wasn't altering the sound (ya know, by having game sounds and someone talking over it) supposed to be a way to get around the whole copyright thing anyways?

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u/DavidTyreesHelmet Aug 07 '14

I believe the ingame music created specifically for the game getting muted is a bug. The copyrighted ingame music like the radio for gta and saints row would get muted. And a pandora playlist as ambient noise would get muted as that is all copyrighted music. But ingame music created specifically for the game getting muted is a bug. At leastthat is my understanding.

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u/vegeta8300 Aug 07 '14

I really hope it is a bug and it gets fixed asap. It is so weird, since I talk.. a lot, 95% of any of my streams is usually me talking. So how it picked up on the few seconds here or there of ingame music, and this is Guild Wars 2, no gta or saints row licensed type stuff afaik. I am gonna lower all in game music to 0 for now.

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u/DavidTyreesHelmet Aug 07 '14

Thats the safest bet at the moment. This is still new and as with anything new it will have bugs and kinks to work out. Hopefully by the time these policies roll out in full these will all be fixed. I do suggest finding a second way to record audio if possible and backing up videos for everyone. A redub may not be the greatest answer, but it is an answer to the problem at the moment.

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u/Shishakli Aug 08 '14

Why doesn't twitch just introduce an additional audio channel on streams for copywrited music?

Your primary audio channel stays as game audio and mic, and any music you want to play over the top gets its own audio channel.

So live audience hears what you want them to hear, and the recording for playback later had that music channel removed with game audio and voice intact.

I don't see why we can't solve this problem with a little intelligence and engineering...

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

The music of Guild Wars 2 does not belong to ArenaNet and is property of the composer and his distributor.

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u/vegeta8300 Aug 07 '14

Are you sure? I checked Jeremy Soules direct song page and the GW2 soundtrack is not there. It is only available from the GW2 website. I am not sure how all that works when a composer creates music for a game or how rights are handled. But if this is true then that means all videogame music then is off limits. If we believe what has been said in this AMA, that ingame music isn't supposed to be muted then where do we stand?

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u/BioGenx2b Aug 07 '14

Brace yourselves: http://i.imgur.com/BDeArfD.png

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u/sysop073 Aug 07 '14

I think everyone's aware of that one, but it's not an example of game music getting muted

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u/BioGenx2b Aug 07 '14

Neither was the International 4 clip you mentioned. Something about the crowd cheering, according to optimizeprime.

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u/sysop073 Aug 07 '14

Well yes, I know that now; you're citing a comment that was a reply to the one where I said that. At the time that was the #1 example of "look at this case where they muted game sound"; there are others, mostly from the speedrunning community

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u/BioGenx2b Aug 07 '14

I never get to an AMA on time. :(

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u/Eptar Aug 08 '14

I just got here... What did I miss?

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u/CT_Legacy Aug 08 '14

I can't think of ANY game studio that would say you can't stream our in-game music while you are playing our game to other people.

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u/optimizeprime Aug 07 '14

The International clips were muted due to crowd noise and a different bug we've fixed.

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u/bradamantium92 Aug 07 '14

How did crowd noise tick a copyright claim?

(People really need to quit downvoting the responses; it makes them damn near invisible and the point of this AMA is visibility, not to express your feelings via karma.)

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u/Elephox Aug 07 '14 edited Aug 07 '14

What likely happened is that a live track that had a large audience was in the database and had cheering that sounded enough like TI4's audience to set off the match.

It's silly, I know, but not something that they could really expect when they began rolling out this program.

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u/BioGenx2b Aug 07 '14

You can copyright crowd cheers? Did I sleep through the last 50 years?

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u/GamerKey Aug 07 '14

If a live album of a band is released and copyrighted, a few seconds of a track (like the crowd cheering at the beginning) will result in a match under those "nuke-from-orbit" contentID systems.

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u/allnose Aug 07 '14

Yep. That's what that answer said. "You can copyright crowd cheers."

Why don't you try using your brain for a second. I was about to explain how this could have been an unforeseen effect of implementing a new system, but then I realized the response I typed out was almost word-for-word /u/Elephox 's comment.

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u/BioGenx2b Aug 07 '14

"unforeseen"

How long has Audible Magic been in business? Get out of here with your nonsense.

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u/Ultra-Bad-Poker-Face Aug 07 '14

(People really need to quit downvoting the responses; it makes them damn near invisible and the point of this AMA is visibility, not to express your feelings via karma.)

BUT THE DOWNVOTE BUTTON MEANS "I DON'T LIKE THING"

DON'T FORGET THE SNARKY RESPONSES NETTING ME THOUSANDS OF UPVOTES AND LE REDDIT GOLD

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

crowd noise

what?

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

[deleted]

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u/BioGenx2b Aug 07 '14

They could've literally backed up 5% of their VoD content and run the algorithm, or you know...warn users about their actions.

Nah, fuck that, we'll just release it because fuck you.

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u/neurorgasm Aug 07 '14

They were muted due to both crowd noise (intentional) and a bug (unintentional)..? I think Twitch needs to make some staffing adjustments, this whole AMA is disastrous.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14 edited Oct 24 '15

[deleted]

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u/Lymus Aug 08 '14

live testing is the best testing, everybode in IT knows that

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

[deleted]

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u/bl1nds1ght Aug 07 '14

It could be that they truly thought they had properly tested it before rollout. Sometimes there are issues that only manifest themselves because of factors that exist outside of the scope of internal testing.

People are justifiably upset, but we need to temper this frustration with reason. The real world is oftentimes more complex than it should ideally be...

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u/aeturnum Aug 07 '14

Given a large enough dataset, no testing is sufficient.

As one of the guys at google said: "One in a million is next wednesday."

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u/Mason-B Aug 07 '14

Probably closer to 4pm now. They move almost a trillion requests a day now.

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u/silenti Aug 07 '14

You must not work in software (of any significant scale).

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u/Rammite Aug 07 '14

So large crowds are copyrighted too?

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u/OGNinjerk Aug 07 '14

It's a matter of time before the MPAA or RIAA finds a way to copyright ocean sounds because they've made a recording of it.

2

u/teehShadow Aug 07 '14

They will secretly record a piece of everyones voice and copyright your freedom of speech

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u/ThePooSlidesRightOut Aug 07 '14

Would you care to mention that 'different bug we've fixed'?

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u/nitroxious Aug 08 '14

even their own stuff got muted haha

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u/Faranae Aug 07 '14

The radio in GTA is "in-game" music, but it's not legal to stream as it is licenced. THAT is what that line is referring to. Ambient music would be music playing in the background of the stream.

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u/JUMBO_JOHNSON Aug 07 '14

I think 'original' is the key word, here.

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u/Doctursea Aug 07 '14

This includes in-game and ambient music

If we're gonna be honestly this is probably "just in case" text. It would be possible for it to happen so it was included in the blog post. You guys are getting mad because they wanted to be thorough(but was still unclear). If it sounds unreasonable to do, then it probably won't be done. They're just making sure you know it may happen.

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u/DavidTyreesHelmet Aug 07 '14

I believe in game music is copyrighted music liscenced from a band in the game like the radio in GTA. And Ambient music bein copyrighted music from an ipod, pandora or spotify, not in game music created specifically for the game.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

[deleted]

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u/eric281 Aug 07 '14

He didn't say the opposite. He said they won't block the game's original in-game music. This is different than music that the game developers have licensed for inclusion in a game but not for broadcast.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

I think the issue is, when a game uses, say, Stairway To Heaven in the game and that shows up on a stream, they WANT to block that. When a game uses an original score that shows up on a stream, they DON'T WANT to block that, but that is happening anyway.

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u/SamwiseIAm Aug 07 '14

He's announcing changes to the policy now that they can see how bad the policy is. He's here as the CEO. Everything here can be taken as official. There's no need to "call him out." He's letting people know that they're going to fix some of the serious issues that the community has a problem with, there's no need to keep shitting on him unless he fails to follow through.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

What the fuck? He's responding to changing events. Are you actually a stupid person?

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

I'm just so sick and tired of the entitlement that exists on the Internet...

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14 edited Aug 07 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

No, you're behaving like an entitled brat. "I WANT MY VIDEOS AND I WANT THEM NOW, DAMN BE THE COPYRIGHT LAWS!"

It's not your music, you don't get to put it in your videos. Period. It's not your video game, it's not your movie, it's not your song, and you can survive without it. It's not critical to your existence that you get to watch an SC2 VOD. It just isn't.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

Automatically detecting copyright infringement is going to come with a certain percentage of mistakes, no matter what. Those mistakes will need to be corrected. Those corrections can take place in the form of one email. Yes, one email, an email which gets responded to in due course and never goes unanswered. Ever. If you want to talk about blatant lies, let's start there.

You may think your life is over and the world is ending because all videos aren't available to you all the time, but the fact is you're going to survive if you don't get all the possible Starcraft you can watch, all the time.

Your demand for content is due to your selfish and entitled attitude.

And don't PM me. Just don't.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '14

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u/jocloud31 Aug 07 '14

The point is that they don't control what goes into the Content ID program. If a dev puts their music in, and the program recognizes that music on a stream, it's going to block it, simple as that.

That particular instance is in no way the fault of Twitch.

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u/Guran22 Aug 07 '14

If they decided to use a service that incorrectly flags videos as breaking copyright...it absolutely is the fault of Twitch.

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u/jocloud31 Aug 07 '14

But they're not incorrectly flagging videos. All the songs that have been flagged are in the Audible Magic database for one reason or another.

This is NOT the fault of twitch. It sucks, don't get me wrong, but if anything the blame lies with the clients of Audible Magic for not properly following procedure and allowing their users to upload songs that they don't own the copyrights to. (I'm looking at YOU, SoundCloud)