Facebook has announced that it will begin a crackdown on video piracy, a move that will undoubtedly please video publishers.
"We've heard from some of our content partners that third parties too frequently misuse their content on Facebook. To address this, we have been exploring ways to enhance our rights management tools to better empower creators to control how their videos are shared on Facebook," Facebook said in a blog post Friday.
A new video matching system developed by the company is one of the specific measures identified to curb the piracy problem. It is a tool capable of evaluating millions of recently uploaded videos that could be considered copyrighted content. Once a match is identified, publishers can then report the specific videos for removal. The system is still in beta and it is still being fine-tuned in cooperation with selected partners, according to Engadget.
Meanwhile, Facebook will continue to use the existing Audible Magic content tracking system, which is the audio fingerprinting technology that the company uses to identify copyrighted video contents. This system will not be replaced as it will be improved to complement the new video matching system.
While YouTube developed its own Content ID system years earlier to eliminate video piracy, Facebook has been known to be lukewarm to the idea early on. This can be attributed to a strategy aimed at engaging more users and the company's ambition to establish its own video sharing feature. This year, for instance, the company has been actively encouraging users to post and view video, according to re/code. There is also the case of Hank Green, the "vlogger" who accused Facebook of stealing through freebooting. "They rip it [video content] off YouTube and upload it natively. Facebook's algorithms encourage this theft," Green said in an article for Medium.
With the announcement, Facebook seeks to reassure video publishers with its commitment to intellectual property. However, the mechanisms required for the new policy will take time to be implemented and content creators would have to wait before a meaningful outcome against is achieved.
