Why Twitch Temporarily Shut Down 24/7 Livestream of ‘Alf’

Twitch was forced to temporarily shut down a channel that played episodes of a deep-cut '80s sitcom all day long.

On Wednesday, viewers of the channel that played non-stop episodes of the 1986 sitcom Alf noticed that the channel had been removed for copyright infringement.

"Content from this channel has been removed at the request of the copyright holder," an alert on the page read, per Dexerto.

Just a day later, though, the page is back up and running, with more episodes featuring the beloved hand-puppeted alien. Categorized by Twitch as an "Always On" channel — meaning it runs 24/7 — it's unclear if this account is officially affiliated with the series or its original network, NBC.

"Always On" channels on Twitch are no stranger to replaying classic TV episodes — or dealing with copyright issues. At any given time on the platform, viewers can find streams playing '80s and '90s series, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Daria and many other classics. Many of them use mirrored screens or change the names (The Simpsons is "The Yellow Folks," for instance) to avoid copyright detection on the platform, if they're unofficial.

According to Twitch, if these accounts accrue enough copyright violations for using unlicensed materials, they can be removed from the platform.

"We will terminate an account holder's access to the Twitch service if that user is determined by Twitch to be a 'repeat infringer' of copyrighted works on the service – under our policy, a user will be considered a repeat infringer if they accrue three copyright strikes," the live streaming platform's DMCA guidelines state.

As for Alf, rumors of a reboot or tribute have circulated since 2018. Just last year, Ryan Reynolds announced that his Maximum Effort Channel would be producing new Alf content, including a YouTube series and commercial for the actor's Mint Mobile brand.