Facebook is following YouTube’s lead in allowing content creators to claim the rights to their content when shared by other Pages, with new updates to its Brand Safety and Intellectual Property tools.
First off, on brand safety – Facebook has announced an expansion of its processes which will enable content rights holders to earn revenue from their content on Facebook, even when it’s published by another page.
As explained by Facebook:
“Now through Rights Manager, copyright owners can opt to claim and collect ad earnings on copyrighted content that is published by pages that meet our Community Standards and our partner monetization policies, and their content meets our content monetization policies.”
To be clear, this does not relate to Pages directly re-posting someone else’s content, as such. In order to meet Facebook partner monetization rules, Pages can only monetize content that they created or were involved in the creation of, or which directly features the creator, publisher or third-party provider.
This new regulation, then, is more an expansion of a creator’s capacity to claim different content that they were essentially involved in, so it’s not designed, for example, to facilitate revenue claims on any video that features their music, as such. Though it could lead to that type of process, which has become problematic for YouTube creators.
“Expansion of this ability gives publishing pages the opportunity to use content owned by someone else in a video they upload without it being taken down, while also expanding inventory for advertisers and providing people with compelling content that might otherwise be blocked due to copyright issues.”
So, Facebook’s looking at this as a positive – rather than having your video removed when the rights holder puts in a claim, you can simply let them claim the revenue from it. Which could lead to some challenges for creators, and prompt more caution in posting to the platform.
In addition to this, Facebook’s also launching new updates to its Commerce & Ads IP Tool, which will help businesses identify products being sold on Facebook that infringe on their intellectual copyright.
The main addition is a new image search functionality, which will enable businesses to upload an image of their product/s for matching against Facebook listings.
As you can see in this example, the new process will highlight product listings that look similar to your uploaded image. Businesses will then be able to report IP violations via the tool.
Facebook has also expanded these matches, so that now, the tool will display results from Facebook and Instagram Shops, Facebook Marketplace listings and Instagram posts with product tags.
As Facebook expands its eCommerce options, this is an important consideration. Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook now hosts over a million active shops, while 250 million people are now using its shopping tools every month. Given this, it makes sense for Facebook to provide more protection for IP holders, while the additional content match tools will also help Facebook maintain good relations with creators and rights holders on their work.
But as noted, it could lead to some headaches, and illegitimate challenges, which could stretch Facebook’s review resources.
Essentially, this is a necessary step, but one which has proven problematic on other platforms, and will likely experience similar teething problems on Facebook as well.
