Facebook is making some changes to their Rights Manager that will make it easier for video content creators to track down reposts and stealing of their content on the platform and ensure that they’re getting their due compensation. The system previously tracked down video matches to a creator’s content and presented them to the creator to allow them to take action like claiming ad revenue or blocking the video. Now, the system will allow content creators to automate the process by telling the Rights Manager what action to take automatically on video matches, in a similar manner to how bigger creators and channels can manage their content on YouTube. Creators can have the system block videos that match their content, shift the ad revenue to their account, monitor the metrics of the video, or simply put the matches in a manual queue for the creator to look over on their own later.
While Facebook’s Rights Manager system is relatively efficient at finding video matches on its own, users can also set specific criteria to help the system find matches. Those conditions include the video viewer location, content type that generated the match, the duration of the period during which the matched file overlapped with the reference file, and the privacy settings of the video. Facebook’s press release detailing the new settings did not mention anything about setting up multiple content match profiles with unique actions, so users should be cautioned that they’ll likely have to take a blanket approach to any possible infringement of their content rights.
The improvements to the Rights Manager allow users to automate the process of handling reposts and thievery of their content, including how strict they want to be about catching content matches, and what they want to do with matches that fall into that criteria. As Facebook continues to gain more ground in video content, its efforts to manage revenue — especially potentially stolen videos generating revenue for their uploaders — will grow more important with time, meaning moves like the one outlined above will likely be made more frequently in the future, especially if the company manages to realize its ambitions of becoming a more robust video platform capable of competing with YouTube and similar services.