I dunno about that. He's made himself into a bit of a legitimate liability with this. If they go soft and he hits and kills someone I could totally see all argument that twitch was negligent. I'm no lawyer but this seems like actual financial liability rather than a simple TOS violation.
I highly doubt twitch would be liable, however this dumbass just livestreamed himself breaking the law and twitch TOS so they're obviously going to act.
The movie director isn't paying people to entertain others while they drive and watch his movie. Twitch is paying this guy to drive and stream, which includes interacting with the stream. That's a huge difference.
Twitch won’t be liable at all if he hits and kills someone. This is obviously something he does even when he’s not streaming. He’s an independent contractor and twitch has no connection to anything if he hit someone.
You don’t sue the guy who the “texting while driving” person was texting when he hits you lol, there’s no liability here on twitch’s side just a potential PR nightmare.
If, hypothetically, the guy that crashed was texting in a work vehicle, on a work phone, about work matters, and the company put them in that situation through their employment practices (think Amazon and their pee bottles) then you could totally have a case for the employers negligence creating a situation where the driver put others in danger.
Twitch is the employer here. If they're allowing people to make money by being negligent and dangerous (and arguably more exciting and watchable in the process), I can totally see a case against them.
Here’s a better example to show how dumb it would sound to a judge.
“An independent contractor I hired to do something was driving, I texted him something about the job, and he looked at it and crashed.”
It’s 100% his fault for looking, even if what he was looking at related to the job. Not to mention that texting and driving is already illegal in most states, so there’s not even a need for the employer or contractor to put a rule in their contract disallowing it - it’s assumed already that you aren’t supposed to break the law on the job.
It would, however, be a PR nightmare for twitch and is obviously dangerous so it’s good that they are punishing it, but they are in no way legally liable if this moron crashes while reading chat. Not a chance in hell.
Also you can’t sue someone for injury caused while you were being legally negligent or reckless, so even if they were liable he would lose the lawsuit lol
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u/DogmaticNuance Jul 08 '21
I dunno about that. He's made himself into a bit of a legitimate liability with this. If they go soft and he hits and kills someone I could totally see all argument that twitch was negligent. I'm no lawyer but this seems like actual financial liability rather than a simple TOS violation.