Facebook Releases Tool to detect Video Theft

Social network Facebook made an announcement about introducing a new tool which will give Web-video creators greater ability to protect their content when the videos go viral. The company said new video matching technology would alert selected content creators if their videos were reposted to Facebook without permission.

Facebook has been at the center of the spotlight when developers and tech enthusiasts complained about privacy issues with regard to Facebook. In August, YouTube star Hank Green wrote a blog criticizing the company over its slow response to video piracy.

Facebook is working with a group of video creators on the initiative – including the multi-channel network Fullscreen, viral-video specialist Jukin Media, and Zefr, which helps marketers track videos online, Wall Street Journal reported Facebook as saying in a blog post.

“This technology is tailored to our platform, and will allow these creators to identify matches of their videos on Facebook across pages, profiles, groups, and geographies,” Facebook said in its post.

Facebook has been trying to grow its video business and in July it announced plans to share advertising revenue with content creators for the first time. But the company has been criticised by prominent video creators such as Mr Green for failing to tackle video piracy. In June, research by advertising agency Ogilvy found that 73% of the most popular videos on Facebook had been stolen from other websites.

Announcing its new approach, Facebook said: "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."

The new tool will be available to a "small group of partners" while the company improves the technology. As well as detecting freebooted videos, the tool will be able to detect when small portions of stolen content are used in another video without permission. However, unlike YouTube's content ID system which can block infringing videos automatically, Facebook's system will notify copyright holders and ask them if they want to remove the freebooted video.

If the system finds a matching video on Facebook, the creator has the option of reporting the clips to the company. Besides helping to identify duplicate videos, Facebook said it is continuing to improve its policies aimed at consumers who repeatedly post videos without permission.

Until now, Facebook has relied on technology partner Audible Magic to help it identify unauthorized video content through audio fingerprinting.

But that effort has not been effective in quelling the recent chorus of complaints. Facebook is locked in a battle with YouTube for web-video supremacy. The latter uses Google’s Content ID software developed by the software development company, which finds videos posted without permission and flags them automatically.