Tuesday, December 08, 2015

IP theft on Facebook?

Last month there was a video on Facebook which went viral, the title of which was 'How Facebook is stealing billions of views'. You can find the video here:


Crux of the argument is that videos embedded by facebook player in an anonymous fashion and they do not reference the videos to content creator's websites (Obviously facebook wants to maximise its engagement with users so that it can maximise advertising revenues). In this process, content creator does not get any credit and he even loses out on advertising revenue. Worse still, youtube has complained that facebook steals content from its website and that videos shown on facebook are not embedded but uploaded (If you embed, video is still being played by Youtube video player).

This is a serious allegation on Facebook and in my opinion, they need to quickly address this. You cannot let users post anonymous content without giving credit to its creator, As video describes, some smart and wily marketers are stealing these videos and uploading them on their facebook page. Facebook is not getting affected from such behavior and I'd be surprised if they instantly clamp on the activities of such people 

For those reading this blog, please be careful when you play a video the next time. If you have seen the video elsewhere, please report it to Facebook and make them take it down. From Facebook's standpoint, their reputation is at stake if they do not do something about this quickly.


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