Much of the chatter about Twitch and Metallica and copyright is getting the facts and the history wrong. Quick thread.

The short version is that people are confusing the DMCA itself with particular companies' choices about how to implement the DMCA. That works to the benefit of huge companies like Amazon (owner of Twitch); they end up escaping scrutiny.

Jeff Bezos is worth $197 Billion. Twitch can afford to pay for music licensing! And any artist who controls their own publishing has the ability to waive their exclusive rights if they want to perform their own material and don't mind that the service isn't paying them.

If it's unclear who made the decision to swap the Metallica performance audio and why, we do know it wasn't because they were "forced" to by the DMCA.

We know that because the same performance was simultaneously streaming on other platforms with no trouble. This happened because 1) some person made a mistake 2) some automated system made a mistake or 3) Twitch failed to secure necessary licenses.