Metallica's Twitch Dub Due to Copyright Concern Sparks Hilarity on Social Media

By Michael Hein

A live-streamed Metallica concert was cut short this weekend when the host service Twitch dubbed over it with royalty-free music. Fans were amused by this course of events — not least of all because Metallica helped make copyright laws what they are today. The mishap spawned a whole tidal pool of memes and jokes on social media.

Metallica was hired to perform at BlizzConline, this year's live-streamed version of BlizzCon, which is a video game convention held by Blizzard Entertainment every year. The event was hosted on the video game live-streaming service Twitch, among other places, but it was only on the Twitch Gaming channel that the band was dubbed. Without warning, the stream replaced Metallica's roaring metal with gentle piano and chimes. Most agreed that this was the company's way of avoiding legal action from Metallica's record companies.

According to a report by Euro Gamer, the livestreams on Blizzard's Twitch account and YouTube channel did not have the same interruptions. It seems like Twitch did not get the same licenses that Blizzard got to broadcast Metallica's performance, and so made the last-minute decision to cut the sound.

As many viewers were quick to point out, Metallica is at least partially responsible for these litigious concerns. The band launched some high-profile lawsuits against Napster in the early-2000s, defending themselves against early forms of internet piracy. Most agree that these lawsuits and the publicity they generated led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as we know it today. Still, some wondered whether Metallica's record labels would really have issued DMCA take-down notices to Twitch over this performance.

The band will never have to find out for sure, and now they have a new meme to their name. Here is a look at how social media responded to Metallica's over-dubbed livestream.

Embarrassing

Commenters thought this whole situation was embarrassing — for Metallica, for Twitch, for the rights-holders and for the DMCA legal system in general.

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Reap What You Sow

Of course, many commenters called out Metallica for their history of litigious action against piracy sites and individual pirates. They thought that the band deserved some flak for going after illegal downloads so hard even when they were already relatively rich.

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No Forethought

Users wondered how so many different people failed to think ahead here, from the Twitch legal team to the Blizzard team, and even Metallica themselves. They saw so many places along this process where the rights could have been secured easily.

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Lyric Parodies

Many fans shared their commentary in the form of parodies of Metallica lyrics, all with a copyright theme. Most of these impugned the band, but some took shots at Twitch as well.

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Streaming Policies

On a more serious note, many commenters pointed out how hard these kinds of issues hit small-scale streamers, including musicians. They thought that Metallica got off relatively easy compared to newer artists trying to make it right now.

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New Sound

Some fans joked as if the generic music playing over this clip was simply a new direction for Metallica, prompting some jokes about the aging rockers.

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Algorithms

These days, many DMCA take-down noticed are prompted by algorithms, employed by the rights-holders to sweep the internet for unlicensed uses of their material. Many users pointed out that a Metallica live performance would be unlikely to trigger one of those algorithms, adding an extra layer of absurdity to this situation.

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