Twitch's fight against EU copyright laws continues with MEPs playing Mario Kart Two members of the European Parliament will discuss how to combat the divisive Article 13 on Twitch's official channel

James Batchelor UK Editor Tuesday 26th February 2019 Share this article Share

Companies in this article Twitch

Leading games streaming platform Twitch continues its efforts to counter an upcoming change in EU law that could see it liable for copyright infringements that happen on its site.

The company has already joined YouTube and the #SaveTheInternet movement in speaking out against Article 13, a change to EU copyright laws that aims to help IP holders recoup more money if their rights are infringed.

Under the new laws, which the European Parliament has already voted in favour of, sites like Twitch will be responsible not only for content they post through their site but also material posted by users. If videos include images, text, sounds or music that infringe on copyright, the host platform could face hefty fines.

Twitch has argued it could be forced to impose filters and monitoring measures on all EU users, which would not only limit what they're able to stream but also what viewers are able to watch if they're based in the EU.

The site has previously called for its community to contact Members of European Parliament to help fight the cause, and now PCGamesN reports it's taking this a step further by hosting two MEPs on its official channel.

Later today, Tiemo Wölken of Germany's Social Democratic Party and Julia Reda of the nation's Pirate Party will play Mario Kart while discussing the issue of Article 13 and how its impact can be limited.

While the EP has already voted in favour of the new law, it has yet to finalise the language used in Article 13, which is due to happen in March or April. The hope is to provoke enough discussion to ensure this language isn't as damaging as Twitch and others fear.

Reda and Wölken are already promoting the discussion through their Twitter accounts, revealing they have Twitch partner P4wnyhof and streamer Pala on board to help attract a larger audience.

The stream kicks off tonight at 5pm GMT / 12pm EST / 9am PST.