Facebook has bought a startup, which would help it to fight against the video pirates. The startup is Source3 which has the technology to detect the violations of intellectual property and tracks down the illegal sharing of copyrighted videos. Facebook is serious for its video creators.
Facebook is not just acquiring the startup but also some members of the team. Moreover, it is like a partial acquihire. Source3 announced the deal on its website. The starting line says “we are joining Facebook”. Facebook has not commented on the deal or the acquisition value. However, Source3 had raised $4 million in venture capital funding recently. This information is available on CrunchBase.
Facebook is battling from a lot of pirated content online. Moreover, it has been two years since the company has released “Rights Manager,” technology that fights against pirated video uploaded on its platform by people who do not have its rights. However, Facebook’s technology falls short of what Youtube provides. It has better content protection called Content ID. An interesting thing is that the Source3 owners sold a similar firm called RightsFlow to Google back in 2011.
Further, In April 2017 Facebook allowed the rights owners to let pirates use the video, but with the earnings being transferred to the original copyright holder.
Facebook’s recent acquisitions and technology experimentation have shown that they are yet to perfect their rights management facility. However, it is desperate to make its platform a better place for professionally created videos. Unlike youtube, it is still not at par with other leaders in this area. It wants to create its own niche in social media network with its video content. If piracy doesn’t stop for Facebook then creators and producers would not want to publish on its platform. Hence Facebook is serious for its video creators and wants to achieve results fast.