14 DAY TRIAL // Following its acquisition by YouTube, Twitch now uses a new system for picking up and muting instances of copyrighted music in recorded videos, and the algorithm is apparently a bit overzealous.
On-demand streams from Valve's just finished Dota 2 competition The International were briefly impacted by the site's automated muting software, for the heinous crime of – that's right – using Dota 2's in-game audio tracks.
The copyright control system is developed in partnership with Audible Magic, and is applied automatically to recorded videos. The algorithm scans 30-second blocks of audio against its database of registered copyrighted music and mutes the entire sequence if it finds anything fishy.
Live streams remain unaffected by the change, but some archived videos that make use of background music were hit by the automatic muting tech, among which Valve's official streams from The International's finals.
Twitch also set up a system that allows copyright owners to challenge instances of muting, and Valve took advantage of the feature, as the audio is now restored to its videos.
In fact, Valve actively encourages users to make videos using footage from its games, including audio and everything, so a copyright claim from them is highly unlikely. The most plausible explanation would be that Twitch's audio recognition algorithm is not without error, and it might have returned a false positive in this case.