Hey guys, I noticed a lot of people are scared of the current DMCA situation of twitch right now. I will pre-face that this is based on my understanding of law, but not music law. In regards to foreign music, you pretty much are 100% safe. I'll explain how in further responses.

So for the sake of this discussion we'll use K-Pop. DMCA is an United States copyright law. Twitch is a American-based company. K-pop is obviously ran by Korean-based companies. Now, a lot of DMCA claims have been from US entities as it's easy to go from US > US company

if the entity has a claim against them (IE, a NA music company finding out a streamer [which is considered a proxy of Twitch] is using their music without having the rights/licensing to do so) it's very easy to enforce. It's as simple as if you steal money out of my wallet.

where it becomes not-so simple is when you add in a foreign entity. As stated earlier, DMCA is a domestic law. It becomes very intensive for a foreign entity to strike a claim against a domestic entity. If you live out of NA and I live in NA and you steal my money, I cant do much

The same principle sort of follows suit here. There are International copyright laws, but these are usually to protect the elite (businesses, people of importance, etc). Twitch is a business but not in the traditional sense. Foreign entities are not going to waste their time

suing a company in a foreign country because streamers are using their songs unlicensed to do so. It's already enough of a headache for two US companies to sue each other. Foreign entities can technically sue, but they are not losing enough money to do so or are unaware

due to language differences. This is why you can go to Youtube and watch videos like these
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmth4hMyizG-_W9jidBqs_A/videos (YouTube has had to enforce DMCA as well, and these youtubers certainly dont have the rights/licensing to upload Korean Music/Shows)

Hell, the youtuber who uploaded the music lyrics has a VERIFIED account just because he uploads these and gets enough views. He even MAKES THE MONEY. here's an in-depth discussion on how he manipulates the system

The music stuff on YT is a bit hazy so I won't go into any more details than that out of fear I might have already been misinformed on what little I've stated. In terms of the other clip, Knowing Bros., JTBC owns the rights to the show and no one else, legally, is allowed to

upload unless they get permission. I have seen some videos receive copyright takedowns by JTBC, but as you can see by the video I linked which is 3 years old, it varies to some success.

Now where things might get a little interesting is a K-pop company with an American branch could easily DMCA claim something. I have yet to see an instance of this though. If any Koreans could comment on this tweet about how Korea handles music being shown on KR stream websites

Like Afreeca for example, I'd love to hear about it. I just see Korean streamers on Twitch go into cafes in public and all sorts of other places and not give a shit about what is playing in there. If they feel safe, others should feel safe too.

TL;DR TO MY UNDERSTANDING, you are pretty much 100% safe to use foreign music as foreign companies suing domestically in the US is a tiresome task and they'd rather not waste their time on small streamers playing their owned music.

Also here are some articles that while it may not exactly be 100% related to the discussion, can sort of explain how the system works https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2013-14/january-february/liability_foreign_companies_under_digital_millennium_copyright_act/ http://www.futureofmusic.org/article/summary-dmca#:~:text=To%20comply%20with%20the%20WIPO%20treaties%2C%20the%20DMCA%20made%20all,undertaking%20a%20copyright%20infringement%20lawsuit.
https://mttlr.org/2016/11/the-dmca-and-digital-music/#:~:text=Digital%20Music%20%7C%20MTTLR-,The%20DMCA%20and%20Digital%20Music,copyrighted%20material%20by%20circumvention%20technology.&text=The%20DMCA%20compels%20copyright%20holders,and%20notify%20the%20alleged%20infringer