Have you seen some of your favourite creators on Twitch sitting back watching other peoples Youtube videos while pulling in hundreds if not thousands of views while doing it. Honestly, this year it has become more and more popular to react to other peoples content on Twitch. The “just chatting” category has been growing massively.
While people seem to be loving this type of content are you actually allowed to watch other peoples content on Twitch? Let’s jump in and take a look.
Disclaimer: This is not legal advice. If you plan on watching other peoples content on your stream you should seek the advice of a lawyer first.
Are You Allowed To Watch Youtube Videos On Twitch?
Yes, technically you are allowed to watch other people’s youtube content on your Twitch streams as long as you provide commentary or additional value. In this case it would fall under fair use. Fair use is defined as:
“In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner.” –Standford University
Usually when a streamer on Twitch is watching a Youtube video, they are reacting to it and providing their own thoughts on the video. When it comes to watching a standard video on Youtube, you shouldn’t have any problems. In fact this seems to be the meta on Twitch these days.
As you can see at the time of writing the Just Chatting section on Twitch has over 500k concurrent viewers. We can see many of these channels are reacting to content from Youtube.
Can I Watch Music Videos On Twitch?
No, we do not recommend watching music videos on Twitch as this will open you up to the risk of copyright strikes on your channel. There is a much higher chance that a channel will get striked for playing music than watching a Youtube video.
If you want to play music on your stream, we recommend checking out Pretzel Rocks.
Are You Allowed To Watch TV Programs On Twitch?
If you hop on to Twitch right now you will see that a lot of streamers are watching TV programs. While Twitch does have a feature built in called “Watch Parties” which allows you to watch some content from Amazon Prime, streamers have been watching other copyrighted content.
Streamers have been getting away with this for years now but in January of 2022 Twitch have been starting to clamp too. High profile streamer Pokimane received a 48 hour ban after streaming hours of Avatar the Last Airbender on her channel.
She said this on Twitter:
just to be clear, i'm not surprised and i don't think this is unfair. imo, it was inevitable that publishers would take action, on me or someone else, during this react meta.
— pokimane (@pokimanelol) January 9, 2022
will chat more about this monday, when I can further elaborate on the situation! ????
We expect to see more streamers, big and small receive copyright strikes for watching TV programmes.
While you will likely see many other streamers continue to watch programmes on Twitch we wouldn’t recommend it if you want to keep your account free of bans.
Wrapping Up
So there you have it. We don’t recommend watching TV programs or Music videos but you shouldn’t have any problems reacting to your favourite youtuber.
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