Streamer says she received an email from Twitch warning of DMCA strike for performing covers

Twitch has been cracking down on content that could be vulnerable to DMCA takedowns over the past year. And now, according to one streamer, the platform’s policy may have gotten a whole lot stricter.

Musician and Twitch partner AyyTrae shared during a recent stream that she received an email from the platform informing her that her covers could wind up resulting in her receiving a DMCA strike on her channel.

“Previously Twitch said it was fine as long as you’re controlling every aspect of the music so I was playing the guitar and I was singing,” AyyTrae said. “So it should have been fine but now they’re saying that I cannot have covers of music.”

The streamer explained that she’ll still be able to stream herself performing the covers, but at the conclusion of each stream, she’ll need to have the audio removed from the VOD to avoid being flagged.

While covers aren’t commonly thought of as targets for DMCA takedowns, they still breach the copyright infringement laws over the composition of a song, leaving them vulnerable to being flagged.

AyyTrae’s words come just over a week after Twitch sent out a batch of DMCA takedown notices to streamers, along with an email detailing what creators should do to protect themselves from being targeted.

One of the biggest things Twitch has implemented in an attempt to reduce the frequency of these claims has been to help creators unpublish their VODs to make sure they don’t contain any copyrighted material.

Covers are permitted as long as all audio elements are produced by the creator, according to Twitch’s community guidelines. But with the recent problems regarding DMCA, these rules may change soon.