48-hour ban for Pokimane, the first punishment handed in the era of Twitch’s TV Show Meta. Will it deter other creators from following the new trend?
Pokimane’s first-ever ban
Twitch streamer, Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys has been suspended for 48 hours after streaming Avatar: The Last Airbender to her audience on January 7th 2022.
The ban is believed to have been issued due to a violation of DMCA, following her 5-hour stream of watching the popular Nickelodeon show. After the stream, she tweeted a part of the show's well-known intro, jokingly announcing that she's been hit by a "Fire nation attack'. The Fire Nation is one of the the world's four nations in Avatar: The Last Airbender, led by the Fire Lord.
This is far from surprising, considering Twitch’s strict implementation of their copyright infringement policy but it seems that Pokimane were well aware of the risks taken.
Jeremy ‘DisguisedToast’ Wang, a streamer and member of content creation group OfflineTV, replied to her tweet with a meme, implying that she should’ve taken preventative measures as he does regularly to avoid any copyright strikes. Pokimane responded, saying that she did everything that he suggested -but still ended up getting caught by Twitch's DMCA police.
Twitch’s new trend, The MasterChef Meta
This act of broadcasting a TV show is not new to the platform. Twitch’s new trend of streaming TV shows and movies has been on the rise this month, with many top names of Twitch reacting to copyrighted media.
Hasan ‘hasanabi’ Piker broadcasted full seasons of MasterChef, DisguisedToast watches Naruto with his viewers -spelt OTURAN in his stream titles, Matthew ‘Mizkif’ Rinaudo had a Christmas movie night last month with a 28k audience and Felix ‘xQcOW’ Lengyel hosted a Hunter x Hunter watch party whilst sitting on top of Twitch’s most-watched.
Ludwig ‘ludwig’ Ahgren, a recently signed YouTube streamer, had commented on the rising Twitch meta, saying that streamers are ‘ getting a little too complacent ’ and that the outcome could be ‘ catastrophic ’ if the trend continues.
This Pokimane ban seems to be the first sign of said outcome, as she seems to be the only one affected among other big streamers, as of yet.
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The community reacts
While a huge majority of Twitter found satisfaction in a law enforced, some had come to her defence, questioning the lack of punishment given to other big streamers, while others are firmly against the DMCA system.
It is important to note that her strike was probably issued by Avatar: The Last Airbender’s copyright holder, ViacomCBS -as a counterargument to those wondering why other streamers aren’t issued a copyright strike. The enforcement of copyright law differs with each company, after all.
However, Matthew ‘Mizkif’ Rinaudo, a fellow Twitch streamer, also broadcasted Avatar: The Last Airbender to an average concurrent viewer of 23,000, roughly an hour after Pokimane started her watch party. His channel stays untouched while Pokimane’s was punished for the same offence, though maybe his stream title, “REDNEBRIA TSAL EHT RATAVA GNIHCTAW”, did help him evade the strike.
But fret not Pokimane enjoyers, because Pokimane will return after the ban with a 12-hour long stream to make up for lost time.
