Twitch presents itself as a platform defending creators; the policy is therefore obviously to ensure the respect of copyright. But in practice, how does this manifest itself?

The platform has tools for broadcasters reminding them of the rules, and in particular the prohibition to broadcast any content that does not belong to the creator and for which he has not acquired the rights. During their game or cooking sessions, streamers often broadcast music. 

The platform provides them with lists of copyright-free  content that they can broadcast freely. 

In case of copyright infringement, the platform reacts in three steps: two warnings are sent to the streamer who has not respected the copyright; the sound of his video available for replay can also be cut with a message indicating that he has not respected the DMCA, or the whole video can be removed from the channel. 

At the third warning, the broadcaster will be banned for a while – which happened to Gotaga, one of the most famous French language streamers on the platform. 

To know if illegal content has been broadcasted –  or more specifically music, Twitch has a tool: Audible is supposed to detect the music content of the stream, and warns the streamer that he has broadcasted copyrighted music. 

In practice, it is indeed very rare that streamers buy music rights to be allowed to play it during their sessions; it is thus up to them to bring the proof that they eventually paid to have the right to broadcast the music of a protected artist; by default Twitch considers that the DMCA has been infringed. 

The other way to spot illegal music is of course to watch the stream and report it to Twitch. However, the multiplicity of channels seems to make this task almost impossible.