New Twitch Terms of Service (multi-stream and ad changes)

[MageTank]

11 minutes ago, DrGreenGiant said:

It doesn't say that. It clearly says "entities."

 

A person is an entity.

 

Edit: Unless this is an American term or something and it means something different there to the UK?  All the British dictionary definitions I can find include a person as an entity and I couldn't find a definition in the Twitch documents to disqualify a person being an entity.  I am starting to think this may be a language issue (ironically, given their recent statement.)

You may be misunderstanding where the emphasis lies. "Non-Profit" implies an organization or business, not a person. Now technically a person could start a business, stream it as an NPO and be exempt, but it also means that any donations they receive must go towards operating expenses and whatever charitable endeavors they represent, not their personal bank accounts for private use. Again, the business established by the single person is the non-profit, not the person itself.

 

This is not limited to US nomenclature either: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/non-profit. 

 

This gets even more confusing when you factor in not-for-profit (NFPO) which differs from NPO's slightly but is subject to very different rules & guidelines. Either way, a person might be considered an entity, but in the context of NPOs, a person is not an NPO unless they've registered a business as such and have a paper trail to match it. Here in the states, you don't want to make an enemy of the IRS, lol.

[DrGreenGiant]

2 minutes ago, MageTank said:

You may be misunderstanding where the emphasis lies. "Non-Profit" implies an organization or business, not a person. Now technically a person could start a business, stream it as an NPO and be exempt, but it also means that any donations they receive must go towards operating expenses and whatever charitable endeavors they represent, not their personal bank accounts for private use. Again, the business established by the single person is the non-profit, not the person itself.

 

This is not limited to US nomenclature either: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/non-profit. 

 

This gets even more confusing when you factor in not-for-profit (NFPO) which differs from NPO's slightly but is subject to very different rules & guidelines. Either way, a person might be considered an entity, but in the context of NPOs, a person is not an NPO unless they've registered a business as such and have a paper trail to match it. Here in the states, you don't want to make an enemy of the IRS, lol.

Thank you for this.

 

I really do contest that "non-profit" does not imply an organisation, especially when it does say "entity."  By the way, in that link there is an example of "non-profit" referring to an individual.

 

It's at least ambiguous outside the USA but I feel like inside too.  I have added some sources to my previous too in case it is interesting.

 

Not trying to be argumentative, so apologies if it comes across like that.  Just trying to interpret the words exactly as they are written without implication nor assumption.

 

[Spotty]

22 minutes ago, DrGreenGiant said:

It doesn't say that. It clearly says "entities."

 

A person is an entity.

"non-profit" specifically refers to registered non-profit organisations. "Non-profit" (or sometimes "nonprofit" or NPO) is a legally defined thing. When it's used in legal terms that is its definition. It does not mean somebody who does not make money. 

The use of "Entities" here covers non-profit organisations, charities, religious groups, community groups, political parties, governments, etc. 

 

It's a carve out in the rules so that if the white house wanted to stream a presidential address on twitch, YouTube, and TV they could. Or if the Vatican wanted to stream a message from the Pope across multiple streaming platforms for Easter. 

 

Could you create your own non-profit organisation and simulcast your stream for non commercial reasons? Maybe, depending on how difficult it is to register a non-profit and if you could be eligible, but if you just want to stream playing Warzone what would be the point?

[Taf the Ghost]

2 hours ago, grg994 said:

Then just:

• restrict 1080p quality to users who spend at least $3-5 (~ 1 Twitch sub) a month on Twitch (that should cover the data egress cost of ca. 100 h / month of FullHD stream)
• or better simply bill a part of the the $0.02 / GB data cost to viewers against their Twitch balance
  • ( because yes, I am going to say that putting a FullHD stream as a free viewer on your secondary monitor while otherwise gaming (because why not now?) - enabled from the money of paying supporters - is not OK.
  • Falling asleep in the bed while playing a FullHD stream on your mobile for 6 hours while you sleep for free is extra not OK - yet now there is no motive against it)
• or even better solution IMO: continue pushing P2P streaming development and deployment (on an opt-in basis)

Being an absolute jerk to creators - small and middle ones who live in a constant uncertainty that Twitch can cut them from their daily living with a single click at any time - is not the way.

 

If Twitch would stop being totally free for unlimited FullHD watch time that's a legit business decision - but abusing the monopolic power to implement anti-competitive rules is unacceptable no matter what. There is no protecting that.

Sir, I never implied they were competent. HAHA. Twitch leadership has shown, consistently, they really aren't.

 

That said, being owned by Amazon, I'm fairly certain their actual bandwidth costs (since it'd be at cost) is a lot lower to the point that's not really what they care about. They'd care about the Processing a lot more and some on the CDN resource side. The actual, direct sale ads has always been limited on Twitch because it doesn't work well.

 

The 3 things I've always thought they haven't done well: Space-shifted Ads (where you shrink the content but don't completely remove it; functionally banner ad spots), Game Bounty Board (so small steamers can just click a board and play a game and get return by some View Metric) and View Cuts from a Premium Sub (like YT does with YT Premium views).  I.e. make the ecosystem a solid Value Add to everyone to engage with it.

 

I'd also have to look at the current state of the technical side of what you get access to by what agreement you have, but it's always struck me as in likely need of a complete rework. They really need to basically make the Sub-10 CCVs cost-neutral. They seem to be doing this via Turbo, but I'd have to look really close.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, DrGreenGiant said:

Thank you for this.

 

I really do contest that "non-profit" does not imply an organisation, especially when it does say "entity."  By the way, in that link there is an example of "non-profit" referring to an individual.

 

It's at least ambiguous outside the USA but I feel like inside too.  I have added some sources to my previous too in case it is interesting.

 

Not trying to be argumentative, so apologies if it comes across like that.  Just trying to interpret the words exactly as they are written without implication nor assumption.

 

It's not really ambiguous outside the US.  I think you are currently the only one who seems to think it means something else.

 

In the EU, and NA, the term "non-profit" has come to mean a specific thing (even in terms of the law).  Entity is just a catch-all term instead of using the word organization.  In the literal sense you have to register to be a non-profit, at least in NA...so in that sense it's not ambiguous as no individual person can call themselves a non-profit unless they register as one.

 

To put it bluntly the way they phrased it, it can really only mean that.  If they were talking about streamers who don't currently make money the terminology would be quite different.  Like in cases like that they would word it as any entity with revenue below $x [and set the amount, similar to how Unity/UE does it]...because it's very easy to create a company that has "zero profits", it would be as simple as setting up a company and then effectively paying your employees every dime earned.

[grg994]

36 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

That said, being owned by Amazon, I'm fairly certain their actual bandwidth costs (since it'd be at cost) is a lot lower to the point that's not really what they care about. They'd care about the Processing a lot more and some on the CDN resource side.

Disagree. Data center egress cost towards the viewers make up more than 90% of the costs. (It is not really "bandwidth costs", because it is not just the fee of the internet bandwidth but the capital and the electricity cost for the networking infrastructure of the data center.) Everything else is negligible.

 

Cheapest data centers have a public data egress rate about $0.01 / GB. A full time streamer at 40 h / week with 1000 FullHd viewers at 8 Mbit / s => It's $5760 / month in data egress costs. Everything else can be handled on a what... ~$50 / month vCPU + vGPU.

[DrGreenGiant]

@Spottyand @wanderingfool2 thank you very much for your insight.

 

Here in the UK, a legally defined "not-for-profit organisation" doesn't always have to be registered.  I have volunteered with a few over the years.  Examples include unregistered charities, community groups and unincorporated associations.  Those are all considered "not for profit organisations" in the UK.  No registration with any body is required to self assign that terminology (provided that you follow some very basic regulations.)

[Drazil100]

15 hours ago, grg994 said:

Then just:

• restrict 1080p quality to users who spend at least $3-5 (~ 1 Twitch sub) a month on Twitch (that should cover the data egress cost of ca. 100 h / month of FullHD stream)
• or better simply bill a part of the the $0.02 / GB data cost to viewers against their Twitch balance
  • ( because yes, I am going to say that putting a FullHD stream as a free viewer on your secondary monitor while otherwise gaming (because why not now?) - enabled from the money of paying supporters - is not OK.
  • Falling asleep in the bed while playing a FullHD stream on your mobile for 6 hours while you sleep for free is extra not OK - yet now there is no motive against it)

I actually agree with this though there are probably way better implementations of the same idea that would be easier to market.

We have gotten too used to the idea that everything on the internet is free. Charge us for the portions of your services that actually cost you money instead of trying to find alternative means to squeeze extra money out of creators. I would be happy to only watch at standard definition if it meant less ads, and less screwing over creators. 

 

The simpler solution I might recommend is allow HD streaming only to affiliates and partners, and only allow viewing HD streams to channel subscribers or offer a more expensive option that works across the whole site. 

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Drazil100 said:

I actually agree with this though there are probably way better implementations of the same idea that would be easier to market.

We have gotten too used to the idea that everything on the internet is free. Charge us for the portions of your services that actually cost you money instead of trying to find alternative means to squeeze extra money out of creators. I would be happy to only watch at standard definition if it meant less ads, and less screwing over creators. 

 

The simpler solution I might recommend is allow HD streaming only to affiliates and partners, and only allow viewing HD streams to channel subscribers or offer a more expensive option that works across the whole site. 

Not to suggest bad ideas, but I'd set it up this way:

 

YT/Twitch/etc

 

Allow ingress for free, and egress at the same quality, which means you are incentivized as the streamer to pick AV1/2160p60 @ 15Mbps If you have the hardware, or AV1/H265 1080p60 @ 5-6Mbps if you have weaker hardware. As the viewer you can watch the stream at:

- Same quality via P2P at no cost

- Same quality direct from service if you subscribe to the streamer, all other lower quality options available on-the-fly if the streamer is "affiliate" or better. (Transcoding service subject to capacity limits, eg 10,000 CCV transcoding 720p would actually be 1 720p stream replicated 10,000 times, not transcoded 10,000 times.)

- Lower quality (eg AV1/H265/H264 720p60) GPU upscaled / mobile 720p60, on ad-supported streams

- Lowest quality ( H264 480p60 ) / audio-only when browser software/device is not in focus. Always available.

 

No ads will be shown on P2P nodes, and ads will only play video/audio ads if the window is in focus if the streamer has directed the stream to play ads at that point.

 

The problem is that P2P is not super reliable for a live stream as it doesn't scale, and this is what's currently done by Twitch in Korea due to the 10-fold cost of bandwidth.

 

As for switching quality when the browser isn't visible, I think this would be the perfect way to save bandwidth for both the service and the users, because sometimes you want to watch two streamers at once, but you're not going to watch them both at 1080p60 if you only have one 1080p screen. This however requires some means of feedback from the browser to let the site know if the screen has been reduced below current quality size or isn't visible..

 

 

[wanderingfool2]

10 hours ago, DrGreenGiant said:

Here in the UK, a legally defined "not-for-profit organisation" doesn't always have to be registered

There's a distinction between NFP and NP entities.  Either either way though whether or not it requires registration doesn't change the meaning of the terms of service.  The words NFP and NP are pretty clear cut in their definitions around the world and those definitions don't match what you were implying.

 

A streamer who doesn't make money, or even a streamer who intends just to break even (sort of like a hobby) doesn't qualify as a NP.  They might be able to try claiming they are providing a public service, but I doubt any adjudicator would find that the case.   It is different for ones that actually provide services and such though to better the community, but then again those also are defined as a non-profit and there are legal ramifications of calling oneself non profits (even if non registered)

[Faer-Anne]

As of late yesterday, they have finally updated the ToS to reflect not preventing individuals from using branded content.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230608233953/https://www.twitch.tv/p/en/legal/terms-of-service/

This took place sometime in the late afternoon (after 4PM Pacific Time), as evidenced by Web Archive.  This still does not in any way address multi-streaming, which afaik, is still blanket banned without "without advance written permission from Twitch"

[grg994]

 

^{(see the stream title ---^ )} Linus has some balls of steel. Big respect!

[Faer-Anne]

For those following along who haven't seen the show, and are curious about LTT future, the answer appears, as of right now, to be that they had a contract, but are not sure if it still applies.  And if it doesn't, Linus seems cool with letting Twitch throw a fit and ban them, and that he's not gonna try and fight it.  This is based *purely* on his likely off-the-cuff comments on WAN show.