In its quest to displace YouTube, Facebook cracks down on video piracy
Earlier this month, YouTube star Hank Green, co-creator of the highly popular Vlogbrothers channel, called out Facebook for the way it handles video.
In a blog post titled 鈥�,鈥� Mr. Green pointed out that almost three-quarters of the most popular Facebook videos in 2015 so far have been stolen from other sites and re-uploaded without permission from the creators.
鈥淲hat is Facebook doing about it?,鈥� Green asks. 鈥淭hey鈥檒l take the video down a couple days after you let them know. Y鈥檏now, once it鈥檚 received 99.9% of the views it will ever receive.鈥�
Last week, Facebook rolled out new tools and technology to crack down on video piracy 鈥� also known as 鈥溾�� 鈥� on its site. Facebook was already using a system called Audible Magic to fingerprint videos based on their audio, and to prevent unauthorized videos from being uploaded to the site. But that technology didn鈥檛 always work perfectly, so in addition to enhancing the way it works on Facebook, the company is also building its own special video-matching technology to let creators keep third parties from uploading their content without permission.
Content owners will also have access to better reporting tools to let Facebook know if someone has uploaded one of their videos without permission.
鈥淲e鈥檙e making improvements to our existing procedures so that infringing content can be reported and removed more efficiently, and to keep repeat infringers off our service,鈥� the company says聽. Users who repeatedly upload others鈥� content without permission could be blocked from posting videos and photos to Facebook altogether, The Wall Street Journal鈥檚 Mike Shields .
Facebook says it will beta-test the new tools with a small group of content creators, including the multichannel video company Fullscreen, whose chief executive officer George Strompolos has been on Facebook. Facebook hopes to displace YouTube as the Internet鈥檚 central video hub, and while freebooted content may bump up the total number of Facebook video views, the company risks alienating content creators who don鈥檛 receive any kind of compensation when their videos are reposted by a third party.
鈥淔acebook is an interesting, emerging platform for us,鈥� Green writes in his blog post on video freebooting. 鈥淚鈥檓 excited about the potential future of Facebook as a video platform.鈥�
On YouTube, content creators such as Vlogbrothers receive compensation from advertisers based on the number of views a video receives. But if a video is taken from YouTube and reposted on Facebook by a third party, and then goes viral on the social network, those creators don鈥檛 receive any kind of compensation for all the views.
Facebook now generates more than four billion video streams each day, but hasn鈥檛 yet introduced a way for content creators to make money off hosted videos. Facebook鈥檚 blog post offers the faintest hint that this system may eventually change. 鈥淚n the long-term, our goal is to provide a comprehensive video management system that fits the needs of our partners,鈥� . 鈥淭his will take time, but we鈥檙e working on it, and we鈥檙e committed.鈥�
