Metallica performed their “For Whom the Bell Tolls” live from their headquarters in California as part of BlizzCon, the annual presentation for video game producers Blizzard Entertainment.
The heavy metal legends appeared earlier during BlizzCon 2014. This year’s conference only went live due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We would love to be there this year, but of course it can not be, so here we are, and it’s for you,” James Hetfield told the virtual audience before performing the Ride the Lightning classic.
BlizzCon has been streaming on various media – YouTube, Twitter, Twitch, etc. – but viewers quickly noticed that the group’s music was replaced by something un-Metallica as a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which is not secure. kicked in to protect the song’s rights.
the current state of Twitch: the official Twitch Gaming channel cut off the live Metallica concert to play 8bit folk music to avoid DMCA pic.twitter.com/sCn56So8Ee
– Rod Breslau (@Slasher) 19 February 2021
According to EuroGamer, Twitch has had DMCA issues over the past few months and even warned their streamers not to remove previously recorded music on their channels or notices; in May 2020, record companies began sending out DMCA alerts to Twitch users regarding their archived tracks.
As noted on social media and during the stream, the sound was a major moment for Metallica, who was at the forefront of the fight against Napster’s business file in the music industry 20 years earlier, although the legal battle three years after the establishment of the DMCA took place. .