Facebook ramps up video piracy fighting technology

Think of video piracy, and talk of BitTorrent probably isn’t far away. While torrented movies and TV shows account for a large proportion of pirated material, it is far from being the end of the story. Even sites as seemingly innocuous as Facebook can be part of the problem.

The social network is not really used as a way to share the latest blockbuster movies, but it is home to a lot of 'recycled' content, the rights for which are not necessarily owned by the uploader. Responding to growing complaints from video publishers, Facebook is ramping up its fight against piracy, boosting the existing Audible Magic audio fingerprinting tool, introducing a video fingerprinting utility, and ensuring that repeat offenders are kept off the site.

Stemming the flow of pirated footage is a tricky task to say the least. Audible Magic helps to automatically identify some offending material by checking the audio track, and Facebook is working to make this a more effective way to help wipe out so-called 'freebooting'. Facebook says that it has more plans to help keep video publishers happy.

We’re working with Audible Magic to enhance the way that system works with Facebook, including improving the intake of content intended to be blocked from our platform. And we’re 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.

To complement Audible Magic, Facebook is also giving a small number of users access to a new video matching tool. This works in much the same way as the audio fingerprinter, making it possible to check for duplicate copies of a video across the Facebook network. Whilst in beta, the tool will have a small user base while Facebook gathers feedback in preparation for a wider roll out.

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