ESL illegally filed DMCA notices against Twitch streamers, because their Facebook streams were getting far less viewers than the alleged streamers

The Electronic Sports League (ESL) is currently hosting the ESL One Genting Dota 2 minor and they've recently announced their switch to Facebook as their primary broadcasting platform, and fans were arguably upset. However, that's not where the story ends.

On approximately January 24th, popular streamer of the tournament MLPDota received a DMCA takedown notice from ESL, and their channel was subsequently suspended on Twitch.

Fans were quick to notice and a Reddit post was created on the Dota 2 subreddit to get the matter clarified. It had been confirmed that MLPDota had been taken down, and not 2 hours later BananaSlamJamma's account was also verified as having been taken down.

Jonas Vikan, (better known as BSL) the tournament director for ESL Genting 2018 made a statement regarding the DMCA takedowns that went to popular Dota 2 streamers for having streamed the ESL One Genting tournament from their clients on to more popular platforms such as Twitch and YouTube Gaming:

This understandably left fans with a bad taste in their mouth, as the primary statement was 'we are not going to allow any streams that are competing with our main language streams'. This implied that any stream that would compete with the ESL One Facebook streams would be taken down... and that seems to have become a reality. BSL claims that every account that was issued a takedown notice was reviewed before the notice went out, to ensure the rule breaking was taking place, according to the fans, this was not the case. Many claim that each of the streamers in question were non-monetized and non-sponsored, or that they were either using their own footage.

Fans made complaints about Facebook's platform, due to areas of the video being cut off, or the lack of a theater mode and live chat. Worse yet, fans are now in an uproar, many speculating that the real reason ESL has decided to take the streams down was purely due to competition. The platform ESL chose to host on was just not viable for their audience, so they chose a new one.

In regards to the legality of streaming events like these, Valve wrote a Dota 2 Blog Post in October of last year stating that "...in addition to the official, fully-produced streams from the tournament organizer itself, we believe that anyone should be able to broadcast a match from DotaTV for their audience. However, we don’t think they should do so in a commercial manner or in a way that directly competes with the tournament organizer’s stream. This means no advertising/branding overlays, and no sponsorships. It also means not using any of the official broadcast’s content such as caster audio, camerawork, overlays, interstitial content, and so on."

So, if streamers had sponsorships, they deserved their DMCAs, but what about the free agents? They too got hit by the almighty DMCA banhammer, and Twitch doesn't exactly have an easy way to counter-notify in the event of a takedown. If you so wish to counter-notify and attempt to appeal your DMCA takedown and ban, you must have it be a written communication that includes the following:

Your physical or electronic signature.

Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.

A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.

The subscriber’s name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if your address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which Twitch may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.

So, if you don't understand the legal jargon, it basically says 'send a letter to Twitch stating you are who you say you are, include the material that was taken down, and you must make a statement that you 'in good faith' did not commit copyright infringement. Finish it out with your name, number and consent that you accept legal responsibility for the counter-claim and will go to court if necessary.'

To be honest, this is far more complicated than the YouTube counter-claim notice, which may cause content creators to accept the DMCA and keep their ban or suspension. (Which, if they then create another account, will result in a ban evasion perma-ban.)

Needless to say, if you thought EA was Darth Vader, then ESL is the Emperor. This is going to go downhill for everyone, very fast.