Facebook’s Acquisition Of Rights Management Company Could Be Big For Its Anti-Piracy Efforts

In 2015, as Facebook‘s video traffic increased, some creators and executives criticized it for not doing enough to combat a practice known as “freebooting,” through which pirates re-upload viral videos on their own channels and gain free exposure from the resulting views and shares. The social giant by launching its own rights management software, a la YouTube’s Content ID, but freebooting remains a serious enough problem that creators have delivered entire presentations on their strategies for fighting against it.

Now, thanks to a new acquisition, Facebook will be able to further improve its rights management software. It has scooped up Source3, a startup whose proprietary product resembles Content ID.

Recode, citing the Source3 website, was the first publication to report on the acquisition. “At Source3, we set out to recognize, organize and analyze branded intellectual property in user-generated content, and we are proud to have identified products across a variety of areas including sports, music, entertainment and fashion,” reads a post published by the startup

. “Along the way, we built an end-to-end platform to manage online IP and establish relationships with brands. Today, we wanted to let everyone know that we’ve decided to continue our journey with Facebook.”

Source3 will be a great asset for Facebook’s rights management infrastructure, but the startup’s software could have other uses as well. TechCrunch notes that Source3’s content recognition technology could identify brands that appear in videos and connect associated uploaders with those brands, thus opening up new opportunities for sponsored content. All in all, the acquisition seems as if it will greatly benefit creators while giving them the expansive rights management tools they’ve asked Facebook for.