Facebook Developing Copyright ID System to Stem Music Rights Infringement

December 30

 
  Facebook is working to develop a copyright identification system - similar to YouTube's Content ID - that would find and remove videos containing copyrighted music.

In a recent snapshot search of 33 of today’s top songs, the National Music Publisher’s Association identified 887 videos using those songs with over 619 million views, which amounts to an average of nearly 700,000 views per video,” stated the president of the association - David Israelite. “In reality, the scope of the problem is likely much greater because, due to privacy settings on Facebook, it’s almost impossible to gauge the true scale.”

That scale is very important for music creators, who generally get paid on a per-stream basis when their music is properly licensed to services like Spotify or Apple Music, and it adds up quickly. YouTube claims it has paid $2 billion to copyright owners through its Content ID system since 2007.

A music industry source told Billboard that Facebook “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.”

Talks between Facebook and the major labels are underway to license content moving forward, Billboard has learned, though they are still in the preliminary stages. In its report, the Financial Times referenced a source saying a deal would not be done before the spring.



Source: http://www.billboard.com/