In a shocking admission, Disguised Toast claimed that he and fellow OfflineTV member LilyPichu orchestrated his Death Note anime DMCA strike as “a joke”
Partnered Twitch streamers feel untouchable right now — especially when it comes to Twitch bans and DMCA strikes. OfflineTV, a Pokimane-owned group, admitted to “staging a DMCA strike” as a joke to scare people away from watching anime.
The Twitch streamer known as Disguised Toast was banned for a whole month from the platform on January 10 after being hit with a DMCA strike for broadcasting every episode of the Death Note anime to thousands of fans.
Following the discovery that the DMCA notice that had been issued against the channel had been “a joke” perpetrated by the Pokimane-owned OfflineTV group, Twitch lifted Disguised Toast’s month-long ban within a few hours.
Disguised Toast admitted during his livestream that he convinced his other hype house mate LilyPichu to file a bogus DMCA notice on behalf of Madman Entertainment, the anime’s copyright holder.
“When I started this whole thing, I didn’t expect it to go that long. Maybe like two days,” he laughed. “Then it actually went on for two weeks! It got out of hand,” he said in his admission.
He continued: “People really just believe everything they see and hear, don’t they? I said I was going to see everyone in a month [after the ban] and everyone just believed it. I didn’t say what reason, or what I got DMCA striked for, and people just made up reasons.”
Disguised Toast confused why Pokimane’s ban was shorter.
Although Toast claims he was not at all surprised by the staged DCMA ban, he was confused as to why he received a month ban as opposed to Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys’ short 48-hour ban: “[People were thinking] ‘The ban’s a month? Oh he must have got multiple strikes. Oh that must be the reason, instead of thinking, ‘that’s weird — shouldn’t all punishment be handled the same?”
“People said: Oh damn, that Toast guy must not have expected to get a DMCA strike for watching anime. Well, the DMCA strike was the thing I actually was expecting. The thing that was unexpected was how long it took!
“Why did I do this? No reason, I guess I’m just bored,” Wang said, revealing his newly-threaded Disguised Toast merch. “Not like I have anything to advertise.”
“This has been happening on Twitch for years,” he continued. “Are you mad about it now because I put on a top hat and spelled it out? This whole thing has been a really eye-opening experience. I’m not the good guy, I broke rules, but it’s eye-opening, I hope for everyone.
Admits to breaking Twitch rules.
“Something is broken about the DMCA system. I don’t think I should have gotten away with a whole series. And, I don’t think Hasan should have been taken away with a false DMCA claim. Something’s broken here.
Hasan ‘HasanAbi’ Piker was banned after he received a DMCA notice for streaming 5 hours of Master Chef on Twitch. However, the company was quick to remove his copyright strike and restore to copyrighted video to his channel when they discovered that the DMCA notice was false.
“I didn’t enjoy the risk. I didn’t enjoy breaking the rules. And I don’t know if I helped by pointing all this out. But something isn’t right, and we need to look at it.”
Although the VOD of the livestream including every episode of the Death Note anime was reinstated on Disguised Toast’s Twitch channel, the streamer promptly deleted fearing he would actually receive a real DMCA notice from Madman Entertainment.
False reporting is against Twitch TOS.
LilyPichu’s Twitch account, which has 2.5 million followers, is still in good standing, and she has not received a warning or an infraction as a result of her abusing the Twitch DMCA system despite it clearly being against the platforms Terms of Service.
Twitch’s own Community Guidelines state that the company will take action on “all instances” of malicious false reporting and that ” violations may result in an indefinite suspension on the first offense.”
An insider revealed that LilyPichy and Disguised Toast are still on good terms with the Amazon-owned streaming platform and they are face no threat of having their Twitch accounts banned.
When it comes to bogus DMCA requests, YouTube has a considerably tougher policy than most other sites. Abuse of YouTube’s DMCA notice system may result in a service-wide ban, which will effect all Google accounts, including AdSense and Google Pay, as well as any other Google services.