Internet Company Tries to Get Twitch Banned from Russia

Internet Company Tries to Get Twitch Banned from Russia

Soccer makes life worse yet again.

pocru by pocru on Dec 17, 2019 @ 02:23 AM (Staff Bios)
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Twitch was made to be a game streaming platform, but in its long and storied tenure, it’s been used to host makeup tutorials, porn, eSports events, more porn, music channels, and of course, porn. But it’s also been used by some entrepreneurs to live-stream certain exclusive sporting events – form UFC matches to, as is relevant in this case, English Premier League soccer.

Because Rambler Group, the third-largest internet company in Russia, is now suing Twitch over that.

See, Rambler has exclusive broadcast rights to stream the English Premier Soccer League, and Twitch, by their count, has violated that clause approximately 36,000 times through the actions of their users. It’s now seeking 180 rubles (which is about 2.9 billion dollars) in damages, and wants to ban Twitch in Russia entirely.

The lawsuit for the money is dubious at best: apparently they’ll need to prove each violation individually, and in the very disturbing case they’re able to actually do that, rendering a judgement against a US company will be difficult – international copyright law is tricky as hell, which is why China has so many pirated and copyright infringing stuff on its chunk of the web. The Twitch ban, on the other hand, is far more likely to go forward, because it will require a proactive defense from Twitch, which may or may not happen.

Here’s what they’ve had to say on the issue:

"[Twitch] only provides users with access to the platform, does not post its own content, cannot change the content posted by users, or track possible violations of rights."


A lot of services have been leaving Russia as of late as the country seemingly prepares to isolate itself much in the same way China has. Twitch could be the latest in a growing list, which would be troubling for many, many reasons.

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