xQc hits back at Olympic Committee with counter-claim over Twitch DMCA ban
Twitch: xQc / Olympics Media PoolDuring his highly anticipated return to Twitch following the fourth ban in his streaming career, xQc revealed that he and his legal team plan to contest the DMCA strike that earned him another unwilling vacation away from the platform.
No stranger to controversy involving his streaming platform of choice, Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel was banned from Twitch for the fourth time in his career after broadcasting bits and pieces of the Tokyo Olympics on his channel.
During his first stream back after the brief hiatus, Lengyel revealed that instead of accepting the DMCA strike, he plans to fight back against the copyright claimant by filing his own DMCA counter-claim to have the strike dismissed.
Twitch / xQcOWAs he fired up his homecoming stream, the Canadian content creator recapped the situation that landed him in hot water, and provided some additional context that his fans might not have been aware of.
“Normally, [DMCA] strikes don’t get you banned,” he clarified, “but because it was a live strike, they banned [me].” He then explained that while DMCA-related bans normally last 24 hours, this suspension dragged on for two days, which raised some red flags for the streamer.
“But then I looked at it, and I talked to my team, and was like ‘Can you do anything about this?’ [because] two days sounds like a crazy amount of time [to be banned] for this,” xQc explained.
Then, after reviewing all of his options with the legal team, Lengyel decided to move forward with issuing a counter-claim against the party who had issued the copyright strike against his channel, which, in the streamer’s own words, “is pretty ballsy.”
Lengyel shared his rationale behind fighting the DMCA strike: “This is transformative content, this is fair use, and this is not what you guys claim it is.”
While xQc believes he is in the right, he admitted that things could take a turn depending on the claimant’s response. “If this escalates, it’ll get crazy,” he warned his viewers, “and when I say crazy, it’ll get crazy, crazy.”
He understood the fight against his strike — which, later in his stream, he confirmed came from the Olympic Committee itself — wouldn’t be an easy one, and that “it could cost [him] millions.”
Despite the situation, Lengyel reiterated his commitment to the cause of clearing his name: “I, and [my counsel] truly believe it’s fair use and transformative, and have grounds to stand on. I genuinely think we’re right about this.”
It remains to be seen just how xQc’s counter-claim will play out — if it does, in fact, move forward — and it could be a long while until a final resolution is reached, but we will make sure to keep you updated on any new developments.
