Facebook says it has plans to release tools to publishers that will help tackle the rampant video piracy that occurs thousands of times a day on the social media site.
ENDING VIDEO PIRACY
Facebook and YouTube are going toe-to-toe over online video-supremacy, but YouTube already has a content ID system in place to help prevent copyright infringement, though it has its own slew of problems.
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Back in July, Facebook announced that it would finally be sharing ad revenue with content creators, and this has basically opened the floodgate to users pirating content created elsewhere to cash in on the prize. So, Facebook will be giving its users a tool to fight back, and it seems like a slightly more tame version of YouTube’s content ID.
“Our matching tool will evaluate millions of video uploads quickly and accurately, and when matches are surfaced, publishers will be able to report them to us for removal.”
This means that content found by Facebook’s new anti- video piracy system won’t automatically be taken down until reviewed like in the case of YouTube.
BRADY HARAN AND FREEBOOTING
Brady Haran is an immensely popular YouTube star who runs a collection of YouTube channels, and boasts over 2 million subscribers collectively. In August, Haran wrote a blog post in complaint of Facebook’s slow response to video piracy — a concept that Haran has coined as freebooting.
Haran is happy that the company has finally stepped up to tackle the problem of video piracy, but still has concerns that the new system won’t catch freebooters in time. Haran told BBC that the first few hours after a video is published is primetime for the video to snag as many views as possible before the gate closes.
Release
The tool isn’t going to be readily available to everyone right out of the gate. Facebook will only be offering it to a “small group of partners” while the company continues to work on the system. Once Facebook feels that the system is ready to go, then it will release the technology to all content creators. Facebook, however, has stated that it was “committed” to solving video piracy on their platform.
