Two months after Valve released its digital card game Artifact, the game lost almost 100% of its playerbase. The Artifact Twitch directory was then used to stream basically everything except for Artifact itself, including violent, copyrighted movies, pornography, and even a copy of the terrible livestream of the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque massacres where 51 people were killed.

Twitch cracked down on this kind of content by banning the accounts of people who post it. However, bots have made it difficult for Twitch to keep its site completely free of real-life violence and other inappropriate content. As a result, the streaming giant has now filed a lawsuit against the unknown streamers who were streaming this kind of content under the Artifact directory.

Twitch doesn't actually know the identities of the people who streamed the pornography, copyrighted material, and violent imagery under the Artifact directory, so it's suing "John and Jane Does 1-100." However, once Twitch does figure out who was behind the inappropriate streams, it wants the court to permanently ban them from Twitch and order them to pay restitution for potential damages caused by their streams.

twitch sues users for streaming porn, copyright material under artifact directory

This isn't the first time legal action has been taken against Twitch users. For example, there was an incident where a Twitch user faced 10 years in prison for allegedly spamming inappropriate messages that included racism, homophobia, sexual harassment, and various types of shocking (and sometimes illegal) imagery.

Due to the nature of the Internet and the existence of bots, Twitch has understandably found it difficult to efficiently police itself the entire time. However, when the company is made aware of inappropriate material being hosted on its platform, it is usually quick to action. One of the most recent examples is when Dr Disrespect streamed from a public bathroom at E3 2019, a decision that saw his entire Twitch account banned.

But Dr Disrespect is a famous Twitch streamer who isn't hiding his identity like the people involved in the Artifact fiasco, which makes it more difficult for Twitch to punish them. It will be interesting to see if the perpetrators are ever identified, and if they are ever successfully sued by Twitch.

Source: Bloomberg