Twitch announced that Ultra Music was going to be streaming a biggun live event with them. It’s a big deal. I want to listen to every single thing that comes out of that show.
But then there’s the trailer posted to the blog post that just sort of flies in the face of the Twitch moral code.
Ultra Music Festival already violating @Twitch Rules of Conduct with their Announcement video http://t.co/9zwIOhOhsp pic.twitter.com/db0cJf0Y4d
— Ferguson Mitchell (@AlphaFerg) March 23, 2015
I decided to be a little silly and post the link to the tweet in a reply to the Twitch official blog:
Will the next post be an addendum to the ToS that reads “official partners can break all of the rules because ~reasons~” or something like that?
Then I got this reply:
And so I decided to elaborate:
It’s not a question of “are all the important bodily parts covered” it’s more to do with an ill conceived moralistic clause that is hurting more than it helps. Ferg goes into detail about the shortcomings of the Twitch policy than I do and I think that deserves a legit read.
I’m not a lawyer or claim to have ~the answer~ or anything like that (I don’t have an objection to Ultra’s content here, either, because I’m not a fucking moron), but I think the whole situation is two simpler situations:
First, by ignoring the actions of a partner–which I’m assuming is the case because why else would Twitch assign a staffer to write up a blog post to promote something massive like Ultra Music deciding to make Twitch its broadcasting platform–it begs the question: why would Twitch take down the pool party stream if they’re going to let a glorified yet well-produced pool party stream from a partner take its place?
Secondly, if Twitch was focused on growing its business with the music industry, they would have rewritten their obscenities clause in their Rules of Conduct (arguably alternatively titled “Twitch’s sole judgement”) after the pool party beer pong stream. If
If it’s unbearably hot where you are, and you happen to have your shirt off (guys) or a bikini top (girls), then just crop the webcam to your face. Problem solved. We sell t-shirts, and those are always acceptable. #Kappa
is their policy towards suggestive clothing or lack of it, is that policy not begging for a more professional treatment?
It’s not as if the management at Twitch have ever been in this situation before at, say, another live streaming service where the focus was on watching people when video gamers started taking over, prompting them to spin off the network into its own niche broadcasting network to escape legal terms and guidelines written for an entirely different type of broadcaster—WAIT A MINUTE, HERE. I SWEAR THAT’S HAPPENED BEFORE. COULD IT HAPPEN AGAIN? WE’LL SOON FIND OUT
But I dunno, maybe I’m just nitpicking because it seems like an obvious oversight to me. Maybe I’m wrong. The policy still needs clarifications a-plenty.