Law Commons^™

A Cure For Twitch: Compulsory License Promoting Video Game Live-Streaming, Yang Qiu

Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review

New technology always bring challenges to Chinese legislation. In recent years, based on technological development of network transmission, video game streaming platforms like “Twitch.tv” have made “big” money. The problem, however, is that the streaming content on those platforms involve copyrightable video games, which infringe game publishers’ copyright, if the streaming platform lacks authorization. And only a few of the streaming platforms and streamers have licenses from game publishers. Nowadays, most game publishers allow streaming to exist because they view the streaming as free advertisement for their games. By making these allowances, the game publishers stay in their fans’ good …