Facebook has to face the anger of top web-video creators whose videos get posted over and over without permission. So to make it easier for them to protect their content, especially when one of their videos goes viral, the social network has made available a new tool.
Facebook users posting copied videos may get blocked
Facebook is introducing a video-matching-technology product to help video creators identify duplicates of the ones they already uploaded. In a blog post, the social networking giant said it is working on this initiative with a group of video creators. One is the multi-channel network Fullscreen, which has criticized Facebook on this issue. Jukin Media, a viral-video specialist, and Zefr, which helps marketers track videos online, are other two partners in this initiative.
“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 a blog post.
The matching tool will be capable of evaluating millions of video uploads quickly and accurately, the social network said. When it detects a match, the publisher of the original video can ask Facebook to remove the video. So far, for the identification of unauthorized video content, the social-networking giant has been relying on the technology partner Audible Magic, which makes use of audio fingerprinting. This effort has not reaped good results as is evident from a large number of complaints from web-video creators.
Facebook is not only working to identify duplicate videos but is simultaneously improving its policies aimed at users who have a history of posting videos without permission. A person familiar with the matter informed The Wall Street Journal that users found guilty of repeatedly posting videos without permission might be blocked from posting photos and videos to Facebook.
Google’s system much easier
Facebook is in a web video supremacy battle with Google’s YouTube, which is the most preferred site for watching videos. With the new tool, Facebook hopes to earn the confidence of the video creators.
However, Facebook’s new technology is not fully automated, as video creators need to access a web-based dashboard, with the help of which they can identify the videos they want to monitor. The system assigns the task of finding the violations to the creators only, which is in contrast to the Content ID system from Google, says a report from The Wall Street Journal. This software product finds the videos posted without permission and flags them automatically. It has been in place since 2007.
