Facebook is acquiring both the technology and at least some of the team behind Source3, which announced the deal on its website. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on deal terms, though Source3 has raised just $4 million in venture capital funding, according to Crunchbase.
Facebook has had a lot of issues with pirated content in the past, and it has been two years since the company first announced “Rights Manager,” technology to detect and remove video clips shared by people who don’t have rights to the video. YouTube offers something similar, though more advanced, called Content ID.
In April, Facebook added another option for rights holders: Leave the content up, and make money off the views that these pirates are generating for you.
Given the acquisition of Source3, it’s clear that Facebook hasn’t yet perfected its rights management technology. The company would ultimately like to be home to lots of professionally produced video, which is why it’s paying publishers and movie studios to make videos exclusively for the social network.
