Last night, popular Twitch streamer Disguised Toast was banned while watching Death Note, likely due to a DMCA strike.
It hasn't been confirmed why Toast was suspended, but Pokimane was also banned while watching Avatar: The Last Airbender, similarly for streaming copyrighted content without permission. She was banned for 48 hours but Toast won't be back for another month, according to a tweet he posted this morning.
Watching TV on Twitch isn't anything new. Streamers have been doing it for years and it has even been integrated into the platform with watch parties where you can stream Amazon Prime shows and movies, but that's because Amazon owns Twitch. This new TV meta - or Masterchef meta - has been spurred on by some of the most popular streamers such as xQc. What's new is that it's often copyrighted material shared without permission, hence the DMCA strikes.
Twitch has steadily been cracking down this month, banning Pokimane and Disguised Toast, but Ludwig believes it will go further than that. He stated that watching copyrighted shows and movies could be "catastrophic" for Twitch, arguing that it's "getting a little too risky" and that he doesn't believe it will stop with "slaps on the wrists."
So far, we've seen bans jump from 48 hours to a month between just two streamers. It's unclear what the next step will be in cracking down on this meta, but it puts Twitch in a peculiar position as streaming movies and shows in full, watching them with your audience, is borderline piracy.
Disguised Toast came back to Twitch recently after two years with Facebook gaming. He started by streaming full episodes of Naruto but quickly moved onto Death Note - he was only 20 minutes away from the show's finale, jesting on Twitter that Twitch could've waited just a little bit longer before the ban.
The reason he gave for streaming full episodes on Twitch was that it's "more fun watching anime with people" and that he wanted to push DMCA strikes to their limits to see how far he could go. It seems he's found the line.