Facebook Moves to Help Sift Out Unauthorized Video
August 30 2015 - 6:55PM
Dow Jones News
By Mike Shields
Facebook Inc., under fire from top Web-video creators who say it
fails to prevent their videos from being posted without permission,
is trying to make it easier for them to protect their content,
particularly when videos go viral.
The social-networking giant, which is locked in a battle with
Google Inc.'s YouTube unit for Web-video supremacy, is introducing
a video-matching-technology product designed to quickly identify
videos that are duplicates of those already uploaded directly by
their creators.
Facebook said in a blog post that it is working with a group of
video creators on the initiative, including the multichannel
network Fullscreen, which has been particularly critical of
Facebook on this issue; the viral-video specialist Jukin Media; and
Zefr, which helps marketers track videos online.
"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. "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."
Until now, Facebook has relied on technology partner Audible
Magic to help it identify unauthorized video content through audio
fingerprinting. But that effort hasn't been effective in quelling
the recent chorus of complaints.
The new technology isn't fully automated. Creators will have
access to a Web-based dashboard that will allow them to identify
videos they would like to monitor. If the system finds a matching
video on Facebook, the creator has the option of reporting the
clips to the company.
The system puts the burden of finding violations on the
creators, in contrast to Google's Content ID. That software
product, which has been around since 2007, finds videos posted
without permission and flags them automatically.
Besides helping to identify duplicate videos, Facebook said it
is continuing to improve its policies aimed at consumers who
repeatedly post videos without permission.
It is possible that repeat offenders could be blocked from
posting videos or photos to Facebook, said a person familiar with
the matter.
The company emphasized that the new matching technology is a
work in progress, and that it plans to coordinate with partners to
improve it over time.
Even as video has exploded on Facebook over the past year,
generating four billion streams a day, many YouTube stars have been
cool to the platform. One reason: Facebook doesn't offer them a way
to make money.
"This was an obvious hole that needed to be filled," said Zach
James, co-founder of Zefr. "Facebook is about to become a very good
platform for media companies."
YouTube faced the same sort of challenges nearly a decade ago.
The company was eventually sued by Viacom Inc. over alleged
copyright violation. That lawsuit, along with pressure from other
big media companies, forced Google to build and implement Content
ID.
This time around, prominent video creators, such as Hank Green,
one of the people behind the popular YouTube channel vlogbrothers,
have been critical of Facebook for not protecting their
content.
Top YouTube creators earn money from advertising on YouTube but
don't enjoy the same sort of ad-supported revenue on Facebook.
"This is just the beginning," says the Facebook post. "In the
long-term, our goal is to provide a comprehensive video-management
system that fits the needs of our partners. This will take time,
but we're working on it, and we're committed."
Write to Mike Shields at mike.shields@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 30, 2015 18:40 ET (22:40 GMT)
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