You may well have heard that the European Parliament voted to pass Article 13 this week, which would hold companies responsible for copyright infringement on their platform when it comes into effect in 2021, and a company that has often spoken out about Article 13 is Twitch, even hosting livestreams to talk about the issue with MEPs.
As brought to us by Fortune, CEO Emmett Shear has spoken about Article 13 some more during the Fortune Brainstorm Tech dinner after it was passed, and he's not too fond of what he's seen so far.
"The legislation was drafted, in my opinion, quite poorly," he explained. "It's totally unclear what we have to do to comply or not."
Shear also explains that he's going to work to ensure that streams aren't blocked unfairly for legitimate means, like when copyrighted music might play in the background, working to ensure that the law allows "fair use that enables people to experiment and try new things."
He adds that he recognises the need for copyright legislation to protect creators, but wants it to be done right, and that there's a difference between stealing content and using it legally. Essentially, while there is "a problem with content piracy," Shear explained, "the law wasn't written for us."
Shear outlined these concerns a few months ago in a letter to creators too, as shared on Reddit.
"Because Article 13 makes Twitch liable for any potential copyright infringement activity with uploaded works, Twitch could be forced to impose filters and monitoring measures on all works uploaded by residents of the EU," he wrote. "This means you would need to provide copyright ownership information, clearances, or take other steps to prove that you comply with thorny and complicated copyright laws. Creators would very likely have to contend with the false positives associated with such measures, and it would also limit what content we can make available to viewers in the EU."
"Operating under these constraints means that a variety of content would be much more difficult to publish, including commentary, criticism, fan works, and parodies. Communities and viewers everywhere would also suffer, with fewer viewer options for entertainment, critique, and more."
What do you make of Article 13?