Facebook Finally Cracking Down On Video Pirates

Facebook has really been pushing its video service as a real challenge to YouTube, but it's failed in a couple of big areas - monetization and piracy. Now it looks like the service is finally rolling out a system to at least take care of the pirates.

On YouTube, if someone is using your video or music without permission, a technology known as Content ID sniffs it out and notifies the copyright holder. The channel using the video or song without permission is then given 2 choices - either taking the video down or allowing advertising to be placed on the video, of which most of the income will go to the content owner.

This is how money is made on YouTube. Not so much on the video you post, but on the many others that repost it virally.

Unfortunately Facebook hasn't had any method of doing that - until now.

The service is rolling out what it calls a "video matching technology" that will let content owners tell Facebook that a video clip belongs to them.

This is an important first step to monetization, which is crucial if Facebook wants to give YouTube a run for its money.

Facebook says that it now fields more than 4 billion daily video views, but some estimate that as many as 70% are videos that were illegally lifted from YouTube. Now there's a way for the original posters to begin to take advantage of what Facebook has to offer.

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