Facebook Rights Manager updated to block copied video content

Facebook is working towards reining in piracy and protecting ownership of video content with a reassuring update for content creators. Facebook’s Rights Manager is being updated with new automated rules to support Right Owners’ business objectives.

The newest update allows Right Owners’ to find content that matches their own, and set automated rules from among four new functions, namely Block, Claim Ad Earnings, Monitor or Manually Review Match.

If and when Rights Manager locates a similar piece of content, it will now execute the aforementioned automated actions set by the Rights Owner.

Earlier, Rights Owners were required to manually take action upon finding matches to their content, and then manually proceed to decide what happens to the matching content.

The four automated actions undertake different

Block : Takes down matched content from visibility if uploaded on Facebook.

“Claim ad earnings : Allows rights owners to claim a share of the money generated if an Ad Break runs in a piece of content that matches the rights owner’s reference file. We’re still early days with testing Ad Break, but this option may be something rights owners want to use in the future.” as posted on the official blog.

Monitor : Does not restrict visibility on Facebook, instead allows video owner to monitor video metrics. Owner can also change their automated action if and when they feel like it.

Manually Review : Facebook allows content owners to retain the previous Rights Manager version of Manually Reviewing and acting upon later.

What consitutes as a match, is decided by pre determined criteria termed as match conditions. If a piece of content meets the match conditions set by the owner, their specified action can be executed. These are some of the match conditions devised by Facebook.

Viewer location: The country where a viewer watched the matched video.

Content type: The video and/or audio parts of a matched video that overlap with your reference file.

Match length: The amount of time a matched video overlaps with your reference file.

Publisher type: Choose to match based on whether the content was posted by a Page or a Profile.

Privacy type: Choose to match based on whether the video is private (non-public), public, or both.

Such protection is bound to attract more content creators to turn to Facebook instead of competitor, YouTube.

The following updates will be introduced in the United States today, and will be available to global Pages in the next few weeks. Facebook hopes that “these updates for Rights Manager will better support our partners’ business objectives. We will continue listening to feedback to improve the product.”