Twitch, the popular online service for watching and streaming digital video broadcasts, is in trouble.
The 3rd largest ISP of Russia, Rambler Group, has recently filed a suit against Amazon-owned Twitch for $3 billion. Rambler claims that Twitch breached Rambler Group’s exclusive broadcasting rights of Premiere League soccer matches numerous times since August, 2019.
As per a statement from Rambler, Twitch breached Rambler Group’s exclusive streaming rights more than 36,000 times in last few months. The company is seeking Russian courts to to ban Twitch entirely from Russia over the breach. Rambler Group has already purchased the exclusive rights of English Premier League.
Twitch Response
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Twitch’s lawyer, Julianna Tabastaeva has meanwhile responded saying that Twitch isn’t responsible. She quoted,
“Twitch only provides users with access to the platform and is unable to change the content posted by users, or track possible violations,”
She further said that Twitch did everything it could to eliminate violations despite never receiving an official notification from Rambler Group. In Twitch’s own terms and conditions, streamers and viewers are prohibited from sharing content under strict copyright laws including sports matches like the English Premier League.
In fact, Twitch, on its part, launched a lawsuit in June against anonymous users for illegally broadcasting porn and gory content on its platform. In a recent filing, Twitch’s lawyers said it had identified some of the anonymous users in that lawsuit.
On the other hand, a spokesperson for Rambler Group, Mikhail Gershkovich, has defended the suit saying,
“Our suit against Twitch is to defend our exclusive rights to broadcast English Premier League matches and we will continue to actively combat pirate broadcasts. The company is “currently holding talks with Twitch to sign a settlement agreement.”
As per several publications, Rambler will reportedly seek damages of 180 million rubles, or $2.8 billion. Moscow’s District Court meanwhile is planning to hear the case on December 20.