The end of Twitch? Sued for £2.1bn

[Guest]

Seems Twitch are in a bit of trouble in Russia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50809222

 

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Russia's third-largest internet company is suing streaming service Twitch for 180bn roubles (£2.1bn) over pirate broadcasts of English Premier League games. 

Rambler Group alleges its exclusive broadcasting rights were breached by the service more than 36,000 times between August and November. 

 

 

 

There is a huge amount of money floating around with premier league broadcast rights but wow, that is quite a sum.

 

Quote

It is seeking to permanently ban the Amazon-owned platform in Russia. 

Twitch's lawyer has called Rambler's case "unfounded".

Russia is the third-largest user of Twitch, which has more than 15 million daily active users worldwide.

So there is the real issue, they want the 15million customers currently using Twitch every day. They will probably succeed as it appears to be company owned by some very influential people.

 

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Its terms and conditions state users cannot share content without permission from the copyright owners, including films, television programmes and sports matches. 

The streaming giant's lawyer, Julianna Tabastaeva, told Russian-language news website Kommersant Twitch "only provides users with access to the platform and is unable to change the content posted by users, or track possible violations". 

She added the company took "all necessary measures to eliminate the violations, despite not receiving any official notification from Rambler". 

The Moscow City Court will hear the case on 20 December. 

It has ordered a temporary suspension of English Premier League streams on Twitch pending the outcome.

Whatever the terms and conditions, Twitch should have done more to stop illegal broadcasts. The tech is obviously there, but the will seems lacking.

 

Quote

"Our suit against Twitch is to defend our exclusive rights to broadcast English Premier League matches and we will continue to actively combat pirate broadcasts," said Mikhail Gershkovich, head of Rambler Group's sports project, in a statement.

BBC News has contacted Amazon for comment. 

Rambler bought exclusive digital distribution rights for the English Premier League in 2019, for three seasons.

It is holding talks with Twitch in the hope of reaching a settlement agreement. 

Amazon holds the exclusive rights to a number of Premier League matches in the UK over the next three years. 

The company bought Twitch for $970m (£585m) in 2014.

As usual, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. 

[RejZoR]

Twitch is owned by Amazon, so there's that. They'll just throw best lawyers at the problem and they'll maybe pay a max 6 digit fine in the end...

[minibois]

Maybe Amazon can pay off this lawsuit with all the money they saved by not paying taxes the last couple years.

And hopefully then they start getting Twitch.tv back to their roots as a VIDEOGAME streaming website. 

[Levent]

I love these piracy lawsuits, they are always the "middle eastern shitshow" of lawsuits.

[themaniac]

*Insert Microsoft and Mixer executives internally screaming in joy about the chance to finally have success here*

[BuckGup]

Ha

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Twitch is owned by Amazon, so there's that. They'll just throw best lawyers at the problem and they'll maybe pay a max 6 digit fine in the end...

Probably the case. Will be a lot of fun to watch, I wonder if Twitch, Or Microsoft, will stream the court case...

[PCGuy_5960]

I would argue that big streamers switching to mixer is a bigger problem for twitch than this lawsuit TBH.

[jagdtigger]

16 minutes ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

I would argue that big streamers switching to mixer is a bigger problem for twitch than this lawsuit TBH.

You mean MS buying them up like epic does with spineless studios.....

[vanished]

Highly unlikely that this would be the end of Twitch for several reasons.

 

First and foremost, they're not responsible for "pirate" or otherwise problematic content on their platform so long as they're making a reasonable effort to eliminate what they can.  Inevitably some will slip through the cracks.  If this was grounds for suing the company, they would all be gone by now - Microsoft, Google, you name it.  If they were overtly engaging in it and were aware of it and did nothing to stop it, sure, they'd be in the kind of trouble that a certain famous pirate place has routinely gotten into over the years, but so long as they do their due diligence to remove things when notified and put some effort into searching them out on their own, I don't think this will hold up.

 

Second, they're not a small independent operation, they're backed by Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world.  The CEO could personally pay this fine out of his own savings without even noticing.  There's no way the company is actually at risk.  They can afford the best lawyers, and to pay whatever they get charged (if they even do get charged).

[PCGuy_5960]

13 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

You mean MS buying them up like epic does with spineless studios.....

Yes

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Highly unlikely that this would be the end of Twitch for several reasons.

 

First and foremost, they're not responsible for "pirate" or otherwise problematic content on their platform so long as they're making a reasonable effort to eliminate what they can.  Inevitably some will slip through the cracks.  If this was grounds for suing the company, they would all be gone by now - Microsoft, Google, you name it.  If they were overtly engaging in it and were aware of it and did nothing to stop it, sure, they'd be in the kind of trouble that a certain famous pirate place has routinely gotten into over the years, but so long as they do their due diligence to remove things when notified and put some effort into searching them out on their own, I don't think this will hold up.

 

Second, they're not a small independent operation, they're backed by Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world.  The CEO could personally pay this fine out of his own savings without even noticing.  There's no way the company is actually at risk.  They can afford the best lawyers, and to pay whatever they get charged (if they even do get charged).

“The end of twitch” was meant tongue in cheek. I think most got that bit. It could add more leverage to ban it in Russia though.

[vanished]

Just now, Phill104 said:

“The end of twitch” was meant tongue in cheek. I think most got that bit. It could add more leverage to ban it in Russia though.

Banning it is definitely another story and an entirely possible one.  Plenty of major tech companies have issues with one country or another, often including Russia.

[Kilrah]

 

29 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Hang on why is Russia complaining about broadcasts of English content?

 

Becasue the Russian company paid for exclusive rights to broadcast said contents in Russia.

 

 

11 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

First and foremost, they're not responsible for "pirate" or otherwise problematic content on their platform so long as they're making a reasonable effort to eliminate what they can.  Inevitably some will slip through the cracks.  If this was grounds for suing the company, they would all be gone by now - Microsoft, Google, you name it. 

 

That's the accepted state in most places, but a Russian court could totally decide it is their responsibility in Russia.

 

This all looks like a typical money-grabbing stunt. 

[mariushm]

Rambler also sued the people that own NGINX and they had police raid their offices. They claim the developer started working on nginx while he worked at rambler, so rambler owns the whole source code.

[mr moose]

It's russia under russian law.  we are just going to have to wait for an outcome and an explanation of why before we'll know anything about the legalities.

 

1 hour ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

 

First and foremost, they're not responsible for "pirate" or otherwise problematic content on their platform so long as they're making a reasonable effort to eliminate what they can.

I think you will find that's not actually a thing in most countries.  CR still largely operates on pen and paper laws.  

[Unixsystem]

2 hours ago, PCGuy_5960 said:

Yes

Epic's strategy already doesn't seem like it has caused the EGS takeover of the market that they may have wanted, and that's with videogames - a product that generally takes years to produce and as a result there is a very finite number of quality games coming out at any given time. 

 

Streamers are a dime a dozen, and there are thousands of talented individuals ready to take the place of the current big names at any given moment. Sure, some of those fanbases will get dragged to Mixer for a while, but I'm pretty sure that there's data out there that those fans aren't then going and watching other Mixer streams, they are just tuning in for Ninja or whoever and then going back to Twitch to watch everyone else. 

 

And to clarify, I'm not trying to claim that streaming is super easy or not a "real job" like some people try to argue. Just that the barrier to entry is very low and as long as you have some level of charisma and/or skill and some basic computer knowledge, you can run a stream that people will be willing to watch. MS can buy out the top 1000 streamers from Twitch and 1000 more will pop up overnight to take their place. 

[Zando_]

3 hours ago, minibois said:

And hopefully then they start getting Twitch.tv back to their roots as a VIDEOGAME streaming website. 

But.....

[Nowak]

Amazon'll just throw their best lawyers at the case.

[Trik'Stari]

Sooner or later we're going to need a mesh networked streaming service that has no base infrastructure to attack.

 

Whether because of censorship or companies that fire out lawsuits like taco bell out of a persons asshole..... I don't care.

 

We need a torrenting version of streaming. Something so easily used and far reaching that governments and companies could not EVER hope to actually threaten it simply because they would go bankrupt from trying, or flatout piss off so many people they'd get voted out of office for doing it.

[melete]

I, personally, could sue Twitch for £2.1bn. Doesn't mean I'd win that much at trial, or collect that much even if I won. Obviously none of us are Russian lawyers here, but even without knowing the specifics of Russian law I'd be very surprised if this suit resulted in anything remotely similar to that judgment.

[amdorintel]

2 minutes ago, melete said:

I, personally, could sue Twitch for £2.1bn. Doesn't mean I'd win that much at trial, or collect that much even if I won.

yeah, you could even sue Twitch for $288.2 billion dollars, and win a judgement yet never receive $1.25

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, themaniac said:

*Insert Microsoft and Mixer executives internally screaming in joy about the chance to finally have success here*

"Yes finally! Now we can get the chance to be sued because our users of the platform are breaching laws and we have literally no manageable way to know"

"Not that we ever pay fines"

[Giffany]

looks good on them i stopped supporting even logging into that volatile site of aids almost year now. but we all know find away around this though and pay nothing or very little like ever other scum of the corporate world hmph.

[Mark Kaine]

8 hours ago, Caroline said:

Hang on why is Russia complaining about broadcasts of English content?

because pirating is against the laws there (probably)