At Facebook’s now annual F8 developers conference, 2 issues seemed to be on the mind of developers and content creators in the audience of their “What’s New With Facebook Video” session: copyright infringement and in-video monetization. But when asked about it, Facebook seemed mute.
Among the features launched at Facebook F8 this year was the ability, just like Youtube, to embed native video from Facebook on websites and other 3rd party products (see video below). This launch allows further distribution of video, and improves the capabilities of video shared on websites to be shared beyond previously available through solutions such as Youtube video.
While big news, Facebook still failed to address what was on the top of everyone’s minds: how to address the rampant stealing of video on Youtube subsequently being shared on Facebook by those who don’t own the video. When prompted by one questioner, Facebook responded saying they had not come up with a solution, and that such a solution would take a long time to come up with. “We’re learning”, Fidji Simo, Facebook’s Product Management Director over video said, suggesting these types of products take time to develop.
I pressed further, specifically citing Google’s Content Manager solution that allows copyright owners to upload their copyrighted content to Youtube in order to notify Youtube of the copyrighted material, so as others upload the same content it can be automatically flagged and removed. The response I got back was pretty much the same, citing the complexities and difficulties of such a solution. There seemed to be no plans, at least that they were willing to admit yet.
While I admit I don’t understand the complexities of such a system (in developer speak, you would just create a “hash” of the video, and for every video uploaded match the content of those videos against the hashes of other copyrighted material in the Facebook database), it was comforting to know Facebook is at least understanding of the problem. It was completely clear to me they had heard these issues before, and were actively trying to figure out a solution surrounding the problem.
As for monetization, Facebook seemed unclear on whether in-stream video ads were the future for Facebook video. They said they were trying to reach out to other content publishers to work on business solutions for the video, but nothing had materialized yet. Not quite the information I was looking for, but it’s comforting to know that they know the problems.
While I understand the complexities of video, copyright, and monetization, I am perplexed at the lack of communication on the problems surrounding these issues. It doesn’t seem to me like Facebook is doing their best to reach out to the influencers and friends of mine I’m aware of in the Youtube community (all with millions of subscribers) that could be providing feedback around the platform. At a minimum, Facebook could be calming the waters a bit.
In the meantime, we’ll continue to see videos like these produced, unless Facebook can either provide a solution or start better communications with Youtubers affected by these issues:
