India’s telecom conglomerate, Reliance, who operates India’s most prominent network Jio and Jio Fiber, along with Hathway, is blocking Twitch streams and is showing Error Code #2000. According to several reports and users, the blockage began around the beginning of IPL 2020.
Several Jio cellular and Fiber users reported that this error started showing up after the IPL began streaming exclusively on Hotstar. They further added that Twitch stops working around the 6:30 PM IST just around the time when IPL starts streamed, and users believe that Jio is doing this to stop pirated streaming of IPL has Disney owned Hotstar has exclusive streaming rights for the Dream11 IPL 2020.
The pirated streaming will result in the reduced viewership of IPL on the Hotstar, which will further result in reduced revenue for the Hotstar since you need at least a Hotstar VIP membership worth INR 399/ year, and several people nowadays stream IPL matches on the Twitch and Discord, so Reliance took this step. Still, it went too far since Net Neutrality guidelines in India implies that no company can block internet users from visiting any website or application until it doesn’t get banned by the government.
For those people who don’t know about Twitch, it is a game streaming platform mostly used for eSports, but some users even stream outdoor games. These streams attract a colossal viewership, and one of the recent IPL match streams on Twitch was reportedly watched by around 1.5L viewers, which means Hotstar is loosing out on 1.5L customers due to these pirated streams.
Reliance owned Jio Telecom, Jio Fiber and Hathway denied commenting on this issue but if these companies are doing this intentionally then it might lose their license according to the rules set by TRAI.
After massive outrage on Twitter and Reddit, Twitch is apparently back on the Reliance owned ISPs.
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