YouTube Content ID Will Target and Cancel Streams

As you might be aware, YouTube has been trying to get itself into the world of game streaming—perhaps because it’s seen the millions Twitch has been enjoying and wants in on the action, or perhaps they just want a chance to kick Azubu while it’s down. Point is, they recently launched YouTube Gaming, which hopes to become a premiere place for users to host their streams, except it probably won’t. Because one curious look at the terms and agreements will tell you that the hassle of streaming on YouTube won’t be worth the twelve views your Jax and Daxter 2 Blind Run will foster.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, lemme fill you in on some history: to combat some rampant copyright infringement on their site, YouTube introduced us to the Content ID system. See, a copyright holder or a fan can report videos to Youtube for using content that’s not theirs, which can get the video banned. But the Content ID System is automatic, scanning the website for copyright infringement—if it catches someone, it won’t issue a ban, but it can do anything from remove the ads to forcing you to give your revenue to the copyright holder. Annoying, but in some cases, not unfair.

Here’s the thing, though: Content ID will also be scanning over YouTube Gaming’s streams. And if it catches your stream with material that has a copyright, rather than force you to give your money to the copyright holder, it’ll just straight-out block your whole stream until the material is gone, or even cancel the stream prematurely.

Now, YouTube even admits that the Content ID system is flawed, and it might issue false bans or unwarranted terminations—but its response to that problem seems to be an ambivalent shrug and a "Deal with it." Given that video games by their very nature are copyright-protected and thus ‘protected’ by Content ID, this could potentially lead to a gigantic portion of streams being rendered unviewable by the public.

Now, this is different from Twitch in a few ways: namely, while Twitch will happily enforce copyright laws, they never interrupt a stream and, at worse, mute out the audio during a VOD. But remember: Twitch is owned by Amazon, whereas Youtube is owned by Google. So competitively speaking, YouTube may have to change its ways.

We’ll just have to wait and see how this plays out…