Twitch Makes Major Changes to VOD and Third-Party Audio Usage Policy

Twitch, the popular video game broadcasting service that is expected to be acquired soon by Google, on Wednesday majorly revised its policies that may disappoint a lot of users, making changes to the way video-on-demand (VOD), video highlights and third-party audio is treated.

According to the new policy, Twitch will store past broadcasts for two weeks for free users, and 60 days for Turbo users and partners, after which they will be automatically deleted from the servers - essentially removing the 'save forever' policy. To justify its new policy, the company quoted usage statistics to show very few people watched past broadcasts after two weeks.

The service however said that it would let users save video highlights for an indefinite time period, but the highlights would now be limited to only for two hours. An indefinite number of highlights can be made however.

"Highlights will be saved indefinitely; however, they will now be limited to 2 hours in length. All prior highlights that you've made will be saved regardless of length," stated Emmett Shear, CEO of Twitch on an official blog post.

Twitch says the 'new deal' of not storing past broadcasts would let the Twitch service offer better VOD quality to users, the ability to watch VODs on mobile and other platforms, secured storage of past broadcasts, and an easy way to export highlights of any length to YouTube with the new Video Manager. It would going forward also offer users a matching quality options from live to VOD, and better VOD discovery.

Notably, Shear added that three weeks from Wednesday, the company will begin removing existing past broadcasts from Twitch servers. If users want to save their past broadcasts, they should begin exporting them to YouTube, or making highlights of the best moments. Past broadcasts can only be exported to YouTube in two hour segments.

Next up, are Twitch's changes to its policy on third-party audio usage in VODs which would prevent users from using third-party audio in their on-demand videos - broadcasts will not be affected.

"Starting today, Twitch will be implementing technology intended to help broadcasters avoid the storage of videos containing unauthorized third-party audio. We respect the rights of copyright owners, and are voluntarily undertaking this effort to help protect both our broadcasters and copyright owners," stated Elizabeth "Boo" Baker, General Counsel for Twitch, on the official blog post.

Baker also mentioned that the firm has partnered with Audible Magic, a firm that "works closely with the recorded music industry" to scan and detect any copyrighted music used in the VODs, including the game's ambient music. Not only VODs but highlights and past broadcasts will be also covered by the service's new policy.

Once the music is detected, Audible Magic will mute that part of the video and would turn off the volume controls. The scanning will take place in a 30-minute block. If the third-party music is detected anywhere within the 30-minute block, the whole block will be muted. Notably, as commenters on the posts are pointing out, several of Twitch's own videos are being affected by this policy, and are now listed with muted audio.

Baker added that users wanting to pep up their videos with music should look at free-to-use music from a variety of resources, such as Creative Commons, Jamendo and SongFreedom.

The post also noted that Audible Magic's audio recognition is not guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate, and may return false positives or miss content from copyright owners. If users believe their video has been flagged improperly and that they have cleared the rights to all of the sound recordings in their video, Twitch will unmute the video if the users submits a counter-notification that is compliant with the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

The changes made to Twitch's policies are considered by many to be a precursor to the company's rumoured acquisition by Google, with Twitch said to be cleaning up its books before the big deal. Another move by the company thought to be caused by the rumoured acquisition was the closure of Justin.tv, the birthplace of Twitch. Twitch on Tuesday announced the shutdown.

"Hopefully people will remember the great community that JTV had and the way that people from all over the world came and watched their favourite broadcasters. I think that's what I'll definitely remember. To the justin.tv community I'd just say thanks a lot for all the years of viewing and broadcasting your interesting lives... Thanks for all the memories," said Justin Kan, Founder of Justin.tv in a video.