Facebook developing copyright ID system to appease labels

Reports from the United States suggest that social media website Facebook is working on a system similar to YouTube’s Content ID to track and identify copyrighted content.

The technology’s aim is to stop music fans and musicians from posting and sharing unlicensed music – mostly cover versions of hit songs.

The Financial Times, which first broke the story, cited a source from the National Music Publishers’ Association that it has identified 900 viral videos featuring 33 top charting songs that have all drawn over 600 million views.

Facebook has begun preliminary negotiations with record companies over licensing and distributing ad revenue to copyright owners generated from their works.

The social media giant’s assurances of taking more responsibility for copyright infringement on its platform have led to a more “positive” response from record companies, who in recent years, have been campaigning to bring value back for music given away in freemium tiers and free websites.

Facebook is an important battleground. It has 1.79 billion monthly users worldwide, of which 170 million are from the US. It recently expanded further into video to attract new users and increase viewing retention on its platform.

YouTube, which has 1 billion users, claimed to have distributed US$1 billion to copyright owners, but this has been sharply rejected by the music industry. YouTube says that from its launch in 2007 to July 2016, Content ID has delivered payments of $2 billion to content owners.

Facebook’s ID technology won’t be ready until the first half of 2017. After that, licensing talks will be finalised, according to The Financial Times’ sources.

One said of Facebook, “They see the huge amount of traffic music content is responsible for on their platform and don’t want to be on the wrong end of an artist fight. They also see that there’s a potential opportunity to position themselves as friendly to content creators as opposed to YouTube, so they are working fast to get this right.

“The reality for Facebook and YouTube is that more and more they are transitioning from tech platforms to media companies. And the more they look like media companies, the more they are going to have to act like them and respect creators and pay for content.”