i'm sorry i'm gonna have to
break out the button for this one okay i really wasn't intending on doing this video
today i was probably gonna do a video about obs plug-in or something like that but i've opened up
youtube i've got a notification and it's a harris heller video and most of the video is really
really good and there's one portion of it that really got me triggered there's a bit within it
where he talks about whether or not you should sign the affiliate agreement and actually funnily
enough the way harris interprets the landscape is actually pretty good some of the things that he
says are factually wrong and also i don't agree with devin nash's sentiment that you should not
sign the twitch affiliate agreement i think he may be fundamentally misinterpreting the agreement so
hi i'm machine day and i hope you're doing really really well i hope you're having a great day
in this video i'm going to go through exactly what it was that harris heller has said that is
factually inaccurate about the twitch affiliate agreement i'm also going to just reference some of
the things that devin nash has had give my take on it and also just talk a little bit about
my own contract and commercial credentials as well as ultimately whether or not you should
or should not sign the twitch affiliate agreement i know that there are a lot of affiliates or
soon-to-be affiliates that watch my channel so i think that this content is relevant to my
channel but it's not the normal type of content i would do i may do more of this content but this
is just something i've seen that i couldn't really not talk about because with my experience and
also seeing the information i've seen in these videos it just seems quite it just has to be
factually accurate if you're putting content out to millions of people and you're potentially
going to influence someone's commercial decisions and the direction they go with something it's
really important that you get at least the factual stuff right if you find this video useful
hit the like button feel free to subscribe to the channel and you're welcome to come and hang out on
my stream at twitch.tv forward slash machine dana so firstly i'm just going to talk a little bit
about my own credentials um i'm 35 years old i've got 14 years of experience in business i've always
worked business to business i've sat down you know hundreds of probably thousands of tables wait i've
probably sat down at tens of thousands of tables but i've sat down at tables with ceos executives
directors you name it no one intimidates me from that point of view i could sit in front of someone
that can have the negotiation it's what i've done as a career for 14 years big portions of what
i've done do relate to actually negotiating specific terms of contracts adding terms removing
terms tweaking terms and some of the businesses i've negotiated with range from being half
million one million pound businesses smaller businesses through to multinational conglomerates
uh turning over tens of billions these are service contracts that i've negotiated to the value of
in some cases tens of millions of pounds i'm used to arguing over terms and conditions and i know
about terms and conditions and contracts why is this important it's important because i know about
certain terms i've seen so many contracts that i know what's normal and what is not normal not only
that but i also know how to interpret those terms and i've done this for a variety of different
industries it's not just been one niche industry everything from adult products to food and digital
products and all sorts okay so this also covers quite a lot of stuff like branding and things
like that as well so hopefully i come across as credible and i know that i am credible on this
topic i'm sure and i know that devin nash is very credible from that point of view as well so i'm
not putting into question devin nasa's credibility here i just think that his opinion is wrong and
on this particular thing he's misinterpreting something harris heller actually seems to be sort
of standing back a little bit more from it i think that's the wise thing to do he's not trying to
be an expert on contracts but he is also clearly trying to help his viewers and i get that and that
makes good sense so i'm going to cover some fair use policy stuff here because i'm going to be
briefly playing a clip from harry's hell's most recent video where essentially i'm rebuttaling
this and also talking over some of the facts and interpretations and of course this is all for
educational purposes specifically for anyone that is a twitch affiliate or considering
becoming a twitch affiliate and actually if you're a twitch user whatsoever here it's
relevant even if you're just chatting on twitch okay so i want to first pre-curse everything that
i'm saying here by saying i am a huge huge fan of harris heller he has been very influential on
the way i've managed my own channel and he will i'm sure continue to be very influential he's a
great content creator you should subscribe to his channel you should also subscribe to devin nash's
channel the information they give about twitch and about the content creation landscape for streamers
is virtually unparalleled and for the most part is pretty awesome it's just purely a rebuttal
a factual rebuttal to something that's been said and also a sentiment that seems to be sort of
creeping its way into the mindset of new streamers and more established streamers many of whom in
fact most of whom are probably not commercially tuned in they wouldn't have the business
experience that perhaps someone like devin nash harris hello or myself would have and would maybe
take what he said as gospel but there's a level of cynicism that seems to be within devin nash that's
a little bit insidious i know devin nash is very skeptical about twitch for a number of reasons
and he seems to have a lot more information than certainly anyone like i would have there has
to be credibility to that that absolutely has to be credibility to that but you also have to
be open-minded about these things particularly if you're a new content creator so i'm just
going to roll the clip from harris hello's most recent video no twitch streamer should get paid
five dollars an hour the five dollars an hour thing's irrelevant that's just the way he's
chosen to frame the video but there's a bit buried in the middle of the video where he talks
about whether or not you should or should not sign the affiliate agreement and from what i pick
up here harris hell is basically disagreeing with devin nash and saying that you probably should
sign the twitch affiliate agreement if you want to and it's not scary but there are some things
in here that are not factually correct and you should be aware of these things just some context
the affiliate contract that you find says some weird stuff in it the two biggest things it
talks about is that twitch owns your likeness as a brand and that it reserves the right 100
percent to decide what sponsorships can go on your stream saying you're not allowed to
put your own sponsors on your stream right only they can put ads on your stream i want to
make it clear those are really weird things to be in twitch's affiliate contract like it is a bad
contract and it reflects on twitch that they are going to make affiliates sign that so i'll put a
full transcript of this and also some of the next parts that he talks about because he does go on to
talk about essentially the real world application of this and i would definitely recommend viewing
this video yourself and making up your own mind on this now here's here's also the bit in one of
devin nash's videos where he talks about never becoming a twitch affiliate the title of the video
is why you should never become a twitch affiliate in painstaking detail from the ground up and
based on the foundations and looking at all the data and all of it on why you should absolutely
never accept an affiliate contract with twitch ever under any circumstance so under any
circumstances we know how devin nash feels on the topic um it's pretty clear that you should
never sign the contract harry's hell is basically saying that you probably should sign the contract
if you want to don't be scared off by these things and i agree with harry tower on that i do want to
talk about something that harris heller says here because he says something specifically that is
incorrect and you should be aware that this is incorrect i will quote here just to avoid any
misinterpretations the affiliate contract that you signed say some weird stuff in it first of
all i can tell you from reading hundreds probably thousands of contracts this is not a weird
contract this is an entirely normal really really normal contract if anything this is a really
simple straightforward easy to understand not disingenuous it's a normal contract what twitch
is doing here is pretty normal in the commercial world so i don't know where this has come from
really anyone with any level of experience with contracts knows that this contract is pretty
simple and straightforward don't get me wrong it's worth the paper it is written on they're
not absolutely messing up the contract but it's also not overly complicated either he also says
the two biggest things it talks about and i quote twitch owns your likeness as a brand and that it
reserves the right to 100 decide what sponsorships can go on your stream so it doesn't take long
to find this information if you're an affiliate you probably should have properly end to end read
through the contract because you are signing that and it really does govern you this isn't like the
terms and conditions of a website where you never read it or like the apple terms and conditions
that get updated every two minutes you sign your life away and you accept that and you take the
risk or you just move to android and sign the same type of agreement this is an actual contract
that you're signing that means that you will get revenue from twitch potentially and it opens
up those revenue channels for you so the first precursor here really important precursor is this
is a commercial agreement you are operating as a business but the reality is you aren't signing
this as some idiot on the street you're signing this as a business an entity a trading entity and
you will then become accountable for your actions on the twitch platform and of course your actions
as a business entity i want to cover some things off about this within the twitch affiliate
agreement first of all this was last modified july 2019 this agreement hasn't really been changed in
two years okay it's quite important that because i'll get to a later point on this but they're
not changing this affiliate agreement regularly and by the way if you want access to this you can
click on the affiliate link within your stream manager here and it's literally right there view
the affiliate agreement and it will pop open that same web page but i will link in the description
as well it's important to briefly mention this one here by registering the program you've agreed
to the terms conditions of this agreement together with this agreement which is the twitch
terms of service separately govern your use of the service so the terms of service govern how you
use twitch and this twitch affiliate agreement essentially governs your commercial arrangement
with twitch but the two kind of go hand in hand and for that reason they say if there is any
conflict between the two this agreement so the twitch affiliate agreement will take a precedent
in other words it's more important for you as an affiliate there's a load of important stuff in
here but also there's quite a lot of not important stuff in here the contract itself is about 5000
words and in contract terms that's a pretty small simple contract size 12 calibri roughly what
contracts normally are at it's only a 10-page contract and let's be honest as well there are
two-thirds three-quarters if not more of this agreement that are just general contract drivel
that you see in every single contract because lawyers how else are they going to make their
money well there are some things in this contract that really do matter funnily enough there's a
more scary cause in this contract that people don't seem to be really mentioning and talking
about i wanted to draw people's attention to this but also interpret that as well just to put
things into perspective most business contracts are 20 to 50 pages long i've dealt with contracts
that are government contracts that are like two 300 pages in in scope and therefore this
agreement's actually quite straightforward even if you include the twitch terms of service
which obviously augment this agreement so this document here is the twitch terms of service
again i'll link this in the description below and harris heller says and i quote twitch owns
your likeness as a brand we do a search for brand within here that there's nothing at all about
brandt anyway these are just uh twitch's brand guidelines which are completely irrelevant if you
then do a search for likeness there's nothing in here about likeness as well there is literally
nothing in the twitch affiliate agreement about twitch owning your likeness nothing zero literally
nothing it's factually incorrect what twitch does have in the twitch affiliate agreement is
live content exclusivity so essentially a 24-hour period where they have exclusivity over
your content after which it's a non-exclusive license that's granted this is called the initial
broadcast the first i wanted to just talk a little bit about the terms of service briefly if you're
a user of twitch in any form whether you're a partner whether you're an affiliate whether you
log on and start chatting on someone's stream you are governed by this specific set of terms and
conditions this is not specific to affiliates or partners for that matter we're talking about
user content here twitch allows you to distribute streaming live and pre-recorded audio visuals and
they list a load of different methods that you can basically communicate including posting as a
chatter this twitch agreement basically talks about the nature of that and also the likeness
and there's some stuff about branding within this why is this important to the video well within
harris's video and within darren's video they're specifically framed in the way two affiliates
which represent hundreds of thousands of viewers of those videos and hundreds of thousands of
active broadcasters on twitch it's framed in a way that says you shouldn't sign this agreement
because this stuff is in that agreement well it's actually not you've already signed the agreement
by using twitch even if you first post and never even broadcast you've signed that agreement and
let me prove it within section 1 introduction your agreement to these terms of service it says
the terms of services apply whether you are a user that registers an account or an unregistered user
in other words they apply even if you've not set up an account on twitch but you're watching
twitch this is anyone partners affiliates viewers you acknowledge that you have read
understood and agreed and bound by these services if you do not agree to these terms do not
access or otherwise use twitch services so believe it or not you're already in pretty deep before
you even access this but this is all pretty damn normal for most online services that you see out
there virtually every single online service has an agreement like this and this is completely
normal let's get on to likeness and we're still on the terms of service here we are not in the
affiliate agreement so it says here twitch and its sub licenses are allowed to use them
to the extent indicated in these terms of services they specifically reference promoting
and redistributing part of the twitch services so harry's hell is right in that the way that
these are likely to be used the way that your content is most likely to be used by twitch is
that they're going to be promoting twitch and there's a very low low almost insignificant chance
that they would use it for anything other than that this is what's known in contract world as a
brand consent brand clause brand causes exist in probably a third or maybe half of all commercial
contracts they're normally there as a practical thing so that companies can basically advertise
their services by referencing their clients and there are some businesses or maybe some
government organizations that don't allow the brand clauses in there because their use of a
certain service might be critical or commercially sensitive or confidential and for those reasons
sometimes these causes are either not in there or it specifically declines the use of their brand
but in the majority of cases there's usually an acceptance that a brand can be used in a
reasonable way and that's essentially what this is it's within a reasonable way but the point of this
is and the reason why harris heller and devin nash are both wrong is this is nothing to do with the
twitch affiliate or partner program it's nothing to do with that the moment you start using twitch
that's it you've agreed to this already so whether or not you sign the affiliate agreement you're
already agreeing to your likeness being used for promotional purposes and that goes for whether or
not you're broadcasting or maybe you're posting some chat as a viewer that can then be used by
twitch the point is you're bound by that agreement and practically it means that twitch doesn't have
to go out and seek your permission just because you feature in a video because you've chatted
something or because you've broadcast something and they've reused that one thing's really
really important to note here twitch does not own your likeness as a brand that's exactly what
harry said it's incorrect it's factually incorrect they don't own it what this is is a license to
twitch to use your likeness and they're actually quite heavily limiting the way in which it's used
so use reproduce modify adapt publish translate create derivative works from distribute perform
and display user content for derivative works that's it it's not that scary and you've already
signed this agreement this isn't about you reading a twitch affiliate agreement you know as devin
nash says reading it and saying oh my god there's some scary causes in here i'm not gonna sign this
this is a normal cause that is in maybe a third or a half of all business contracts in the whole
world those guys are just wrong about that okay if this was true most contracts in the world wouldn't
be signed most most business contracts just simply wouldn't be signed if people didn't sign contracts
on that basis the drawback is here as an affiliate and because there's so many hundreds of thousands
of affiliates that are signing up here to the affiliate program they're not going to negotiate
with you on this you either accept it or you don't it's as simple as that one quick note here if you
terminate your contract with twitch by turning terminating your account with twitch twitch here
just say that they can still use your content as part of twitch services and copied store portions
of the user content such as making a clip or if they've used it for promotional purposes or for
reasonable time it takes to remove the backup on other systems what this actually means is twitch
are even saying that if you want to as long as you give them reasonable amounts of time they will
even remove you from some of their promotional videos as long as you allow them time to do that
so it's actually quite a soft contract even the very common cause that's in there is written in
quite a soft way and i don't know why it's been interpreted otherwise feels like either chinese
whispers or people just haven't read the causes very well not only are these extremely common
but they are soft one thing that harris hella says and i gain our quote here let's talk about
brand likeness what does that mean well really all it means is twitch is allowed to make videos
on twitter on youtube or whatever else they're making videos and they're allowed to use your
content freely without having to contact you and pay you and if you're a large streamer like ninja
or shroud those kind of people who will be paid five to six figures to be put in an advertisement
and that would be really sketchy thing for twitch to do first of all i'm saying anyone that's in
that bracket we're talking about the 0.01 people like ninja and shroud they would have specific
brand causes within their custom contracts they wouldn't be signing this agreement it's a really
bad comparison to make because this agreement is basically irrelevant to ninja and shroud but
even if twitch did include ninja or shroud and that was allowed as part of the agreement between
those people it wouldn't really be that sketchy a thing to do it'd be quite a normal business thing
to do to use the brand in that way now that'd be very different if it was used in any old context
in which case if it damaged ninja's brand let's not talk about the time that twitch accidentally
broadcasted a certain type of content to ninja's old channel while as a mixer that would be brand
damaging that would be a sketchy thing to do so i agree with harry's health sentiment in general
that it's a soft clause and that the real world interpretation of that clause is very different
to what people seem to be interpreted by but the problem with this is that it's irrelevant to the
affiliate agreement this is applicable to any twitch user and therefore in the context that they
frame it which is should you yes or no sign the affiliate agreement the reality is it's irrelevant
if you don't sign the agreement you're still agreeing to that likeness cause that we've talked
about there is one cause that i did briefly want to talk about here because there is one that's
quite scary and i've not seen this cause very often in a business contract in fact i'm not sure
if i've ever seen it however i think this is still fairly typical of high volume usage platforms
like twitch like youtube like facebook and things like that i think it's quite a common
cause in that environment however what i will say here is this is actually located within the
affiliate agreement which is why i'm a little bit confused at why that isn't included in the main
terms of service where you have got hundreds of millions of people using twitch as opposed to the
affiliate agreement which is probably more like only half a million to a million affiliates
that are governed by that agreement a lot fewer a portion of the overall twitch viewership
and volume there's a section here section 10 within the affiliate agreement which is if any
modifications is unacceptable to you which is bad english anyway if any modifications are
unacceptable to you your only recourse is to terminate this agreement your continued
participation in the programme this is the affiliate program following the effective date of
any modification eg the date of posting of changes notice or revised agreement or the date specified
in an email to you regarding such modification that's really bad contract practice by the way
that really narrows the scope of how they can enforce this contract so if you know about
contracts you would know that that shouldn't be in there really to be honest that actually hurts
twitch will constitute your binding acceptance of the change what does this mean it basically means
that the twitch partnership program can be changed by twitch at any moment that's a more scary cause
for twitch to have in their agreement but again i still think that's quite a common thing to have
in a high volume contract governing hundreds of thousands of entities and as we said at the start
of the video this was last modified in 2019 nearly two years ago so the actual reality of this is
they're not modifying regularly this agreement and the practical implications of this cause are
not that scary it's probably just something to keep an eye on because let's be honest nobody's
reading this on a day-to-day basis before you click the go live button on twitch and start
earning next to nothing in advertising revenue so there you have it now you have the
facts about the twitch affiliate contract it ain't that bad actually it's quite narrow
in scope it's a fairly soft contract it's relatively typical of the contracts you would
see in the business world if anything it's not that long it's fairly narrow don't
give in to the scaremongering here i get why people talk about this and it's important
and it creates drama it can create subs and all that kind of stuff okay but the reality is here
twitch is a great platform they're providing something that's quite innovative that very few
other providers out there provide there's only a very limited number of platforms out there that
you can broadcast too and even fewer that have any level of critical mass about them so whatswhich
offer is quite unique and of course they're going to govern that and protect themselves
wherever possible that's all pretty normal obviously be careful with what you sign if there's
something that you really don't like in there you do you it's your life it's your business it's
your entity in this case the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks in terms of signing contracts and if
anyone now comes onto my stream and says should i sign the contract i'm not gonna tell you to sign
it or not what i'm gonna say is a scaremongering that's out there is unfounded hopefully you found
this useful hopefully you found it insightful hopefully you've come away from this knowing a
little bit more and seeing it having it spoon fed to you if you did find it useful hit the
like feel free to subscribe to the channel let me know in the comments how you feel about this
and have a wonderful wonderful day take care hi welcome to machine dana's guitar show
featuring me machine dana and a cornflake guitar
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