In response, streamers have been protesting by playing games with the sound off completely to highlight the absurdity of the situation, some using the hashtag #DMCAsoundoff. These claims can be contested, but it's still frustrating for those affected by content ID software that can't tell the difference between copyrighted audio and the noise of a grandfather clock chiming in a horror game.
Meanwhile, some streamers have had videos muted due to sound effects, with claims coming via automated content recognition software Audible Magic. The recommendation offered to streamers was to play games with the music muted, which obviously isn't great advice when it comes to rhythm games, or games that don't have the option to mute music separately from other audio. Twitch eventually explained that the number of DMCA notifications it receives from major record labels has surged, going from "fewer than 50" each year to "thousands" beginning in May. Since October, Twitch has been deleting significant quantities of videos over copyright claims, leaving the affected streamers with no way to respond or issue counter-claims. Wednesday Twitch warned its users to delete any videos containing copyrighted music. The performance comes the day before 23 November, the anniversary of the first transmission of Doctor Who in 1963 which is also Delia Derbyshire Day, in honour of the Radiophonic Workshop's leading light, who created the sound of the show's famous theme tune. So you're not relying on everyone being on the same clock." Workshop member Peter Howell, who is also a lecturer in film and TV music, said: "It does feel like live playing, it's just that every person has a little bubble of time in which they're playing live." "The sound gets sent to someone, and they add to it, and it keeps going round. "We had the bright idea of using that latency to make a loop of music," Earland said. Instead of trying to play at the same time, the Radiophonic Workshop will play one after another - in sequence, rather than in parallel. The trick that Bob Earland and Paddy Kingsland discovered was that they could extend the internet's delay from a few milliseconds into several seconds. The internet has an unpredictable natural lag, or latency, caused by the milliseconds it takes for electrical signals from one computer to reach another, as anyone using Zoom has experienced. "The band includes composers from the original BBC Radiophonic Workshop, which created soundtracks for most BBC shows from the 60s to the 90s and influenced generations of musicians from Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd and Mike Oldfield to Aphex Twin, Orbital and Mary Epworth."Ī performance of Latency will take place at a special online event on 22 November using a technique inspired by lockdown Zoom calls. Now they're at it again - this time using the internet as a musical instrument," reports the Guardian.
"The Radiophonic Workshop has always broken new sonic ground, from the Doctor Who theme to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.