I am Freebooted on Facebook. Millions of views of reuploads of my videos. What can I do to stop it?

[Hirudov]

I saw some of my videos are shared to Facebook, so I decided to do a search for my top videos by name and find where there are shared. I found some shares of the YouTube videos by good people with comments likes shares likes, etc.. Then to my surprise I saw some of my videos uploaded directly to Facebook in very low quality 360p (instead of the original full hd), but they still get tens of thousand of views and hundreds of likes etc. One of the videos that was re-uploaded on a fan page which contains tens of my videos had 3.2 million views which is even more than my video on YouTube. I know Facebook views are not the same as YouTube views because of their crap counting system and the autoplay, but that's still big loss for me and for the viewers, because they see it in bad quality (not that they probably care much but still). The video also has many comments, hundreds of shares etc.. The re-uploader didn't do any editing so at least my logo in the outro is there, so people can try to find the original if they watch it till the end, but this is not very satisfactory.

YouTube has the excellent ContentID that catches most of the re-uploads and when people see that I can know them re-uploading, usually they delete the video and stop re-uploading. But what I can do on Facebook? Shall I try to contact the page owners or the re-uploaders and tell them to share the YouTube links, instead of re-uploading? Shall I report the re-uploads to Facebook and take them down (I am not sure if Facebook abides by DMCA that much, as the whole platform is based on stealing anyway)? Is there a system like ContentID for Facebook or similar, where I can claim my videos (I don't know if they offer something when I claim videos)?

Even if I report many pages and take videos or even pages down, I am not sure these people won't just make new pages and re-upload (freeboot) my videos. Any other solution? By my estimates from what I saw there are more than 10 million views of my videos freebooted on Facebook. I am scared to check now Instagram or other places where people can freeboot videos.

While I love people sharing my creations on the Internet (including facebook) - the proper way, freebooting is bad for everyone - the viewers see lower quality and unoriginal videos description. I can't follow the real popularity of the video and probably only the freebooter finds some way to monetize the re-uploads. Any suggestion is welcome.

 

[OndaWire]

I would like to see responses on this! I never thought about it!

 

[Hirudov]

I would like to see responses on this! I never thought about it!

I wrote an e-mail to a YouTuber with over 430K subscribers, who told me about ContentID if he has a solution for the freebooting. I also cross-posted the thread to Reddit to see if the people there have solutions.

Once ContentID got a match for a video where a person was playing a game and he had embedded one of my videos on the side to watch while playing. So, if someone embeds a video and streams on Twitch, there is no way that I can find it.

I've stopped looking on Facebook, now after I found re-uploads with over 400K views, over 70K views etc... Too depressing. Better focus on my new videos and gain even more fans

 

[ASMR Amour]

I am not really sure that there is anything that you can do about it even if there is is it really worth it? It would frustrate me as well, but I am not sure I would pursue it though.

 

[Hirudov]

I am not really sure that there is anything that you can do about it even if there is is it really worth it? It would frustrate me as well, but I am not sure I would pursue it though.

I've applied for Rights Management on Facebook (their ContentID) system. With ContentID it was really worth it for me getting YouTube certified and studying for the exam several weeks. I learned a lot about Copyright, YouTube, Creators habits or even how to study the new way with exams as tests (my university exams were mostly practice then speak). And then I saw hundreds of my videos re-uploaded on YouTube. I claimed them and the re-uploaders stopped stealing them. Now most of these diverged views go to my channel, instead of hundreds of others. For sure, it was worth it on YouTube. On Facebook, I am not sure as there the culture is totally different and I just saw on random search that somebody re-uploaded tens of my videos almost every day (a big fan I see).

 

[ASMR Amour]

I've applied for Rights Management on Facebook (their ContentID) system. With ContentID it was really worth it for me getting YouTube certified and studying for the exam several weeks. I learned a lot about Copyright, YouTube, Creators habits or even how to study the new way with exams as tests (my university exams were mostly practice then speak). And then I saw hundreds of my videos re-uploaded on YouTube. I claimed them and the re-uploaders stopped stealing them. Now most of these diverged views go to my channel, instead of hundreds of others. For sure, it was worth it on YouTube. On Facebook, I am not sure as there the culture is totally different and I just saw on random search that somebody re-uploaded tens of my videos almost every day (a big fan I see).

I was talking about facebook reuploads not worth going after.

 

[OndaWire]

What if you put watermarks throughout the video? Would that sort of help promote it? Don't know just asking!

 

[Hirudov]

What if you put watermarks throughout the video? Would that sort of help promote it? Don't know just asking!

Unfortunately not. I saw many other people videos re-uploaded to Facebook with their watermarks. They don't care.

Update on my Facebook troubles.

This morning I filled a DMCA takedown notice (suggested by a reddit user) on 21 videos and it took Facebook only 3 minutes between the confirmation e-mail and the next e-mail telling me they took down the videos (more than 5 million views on Facebook on just these videos). Seems they also issued sanctions on the Facebook profiles/pages ,because later I received an e-mail from a page owner telling me that his goal was to share, not to profit.

I wrote him back telling him that my intent is not to sanction people or takedown Facebook pages and profiles, and that I will work with the other people and Facebook to resolve the issue.

I have applied for the Rights manager (the Facebook's ContentID), but I am not sure if they will approve me, since my Facebook presence is next to zero.

I wrote direct e-mail to the Facebook IP issues address, explaining the situation and asking them if there is something I can do to get access to the Rights management tools. I also told them that I am really disappointed how they turned blind eye to the big pages freebooting videos. But I received a canned response, so probably they won't answer at all.

With the limited search options of Facebook that tent to wash away results after the first search, I won't have big success with the freebooting, but I will try to at least partially limit it.

 

[OndaWire]

WOW! I am really tripping out about all of this. This is crazy and I never knew that happened. *I'm so blind to things* How can I tell if my videos have been uploaded on Facebook or YouTube or anywhere else? And Hirudov what is this DMCA take down notice you speak of? I'm super curious

 

[SensualC4]

There tons of videos like this, Stephen colbert, news shows, often altered so that the can repost their videos . unfortunately there isnt a way to stop it though the upload sites algorithms are getting better, the water marks can help you prove it's your content. Id say the best bet is to pay a third party firm that specializes in this to comb the net to find your footage =/ assuming one has the cash for that.