With a simple Google search you can reach various Facebook groups in which to view, on the platform itself, several dozen movies and complete series. Finding animes such as Boruto, Attack on Titan or JoJo's Bizarre adventure is sometimes easier than in paid streaming platforms.
Something striking because while these groups exist with, it seems, total impunity, current users Facebook removes posts and blocks pages for including just five seconds of copyrighted content in their videos.
Facebook has been silent and shielded its best efforts to protect author content with tools like Right Manager and Audiable Magic, the notification and removal program, and the repeat infringer policy. All of them, it should be noted, quite passive and only effective if the copyright owner creates a library with its contents on the social network itself so that the algorithms, by comparison, can detect the infringement.
A person who uploads a video with fragments of movies or songs, both their own and others', can request the copyright of their video to Facebook. But, by default, if you do not request it, this social network does not recognize them automatically. Once done, it takes about 48 hours to be recognized.
The lack of Facebook initiative and the fact that Audiable Magic and Right Manager began operating in 2015 and 2016, respectively, explain that part of the content that was already on the platform is still active while the videos that are currently loaded have more restrictions, because in this time the authors have been able to register their works in the Facebook libraries.
Another reason that there is so much copyrighted content uploaded on Facebook is that its tools are not retroactive, so, in the case of already published videos, it only takes action if the authors of the works themselves denounce it. If not, they remain on the platform with no problems.
The big difference between YouTube and Facebook systems is that the latter is not retroactive, and that is where the problem may come from. Because there may be groups on Facebook that have been there for a long time with movies and series and the system does not detect them if the headlines themselves do not go looking for them.
Despite Facebook's reactive nature to copyrighted content, its passivity could be even greater if a new European directive on copyright had not been published in 2019 that will give platforms of this nature greater responsibility for protected content that is shared. in them. Because, with current regulations, those responsible for the violation of copyright are the users who upload the videos, not the website that hosts them.
The directive on electronic commerce in the European Union approved in 2000, and still in force, did not impose on digital service providers the general obligation to supervise the data they transmit or store, nor to actively search for facts or circumstances that imply illegal activities. In other words, online intermediation services such as Facebook were exempt from responsibility for the information they transmit, store or provide, unless a judge or the competent Administration requests it to end an infringement.
Now, however, with the new directive, Europe will demand much more responsibility from platforms like Facebook. Thus, article 17 of said regulation, 2019/790 of the European Parliament and of the Council on copyright and related rights in the digital single market, states that “service providers, to share content online, carry out an act of communication to the public when they offer users access to works protected by copyright ”.
n this way, the norm establishes their responsibility in this transmission of copyrighted content, it states that to do so legally they will have to obtain a permission from the owners in the form of a license and, if they do not obtain it or prevent their dissemination, “they will be responsible of unauthorized acts of communication to the public ”.
Except if the platforms demonstrate that they have made their best efforts to prevent the content from being available or have acted expeditiously when receiving a notification from the rights holders to disable access to the works or withdraw them from their websites. An exception that Facebook has ensured to meet with Right Manager and Audiable Magic.
Despite the fact that the directive on copyright in the digital single market was approved in 2019, the draft of its proposal was presented to the European Commission in 2016, and work had been done on its drafting several years ago. So it is no coincidence that around the same time, Facebook created Right Manager and began collaborating with Audiable Magic.
The directive makes these platforms have to provide solutions. They cannot risk seeing how it is when it is published and how the jurisprudence evolves, because then, overnight, their business model may not be viable. For years they have been working, a little reluctantly and not at the speed that copyright holders wanted, to give more protection to copyright owners.
The legal services of companies like Facebook know that this directive is coming, that's why they are making tougher restrictions recently
It is likely to survive. Facebook doesn't take all the steps it could when it comes to copyright. And it does not because it is convenient for that content to be there, because its business is for you to stay, and the longer you are, the more chances there are of you watching an ad.
For others, however, the reason for this disparity of criteria has more to do with the complexity of the tracking process and Facebook's inability to deal with all the material that has been uploaded on its platform.
The process of locating, requesting removal, analysis by the platform of said request and, finally, removal of content protected by intellectual property rights published without authorization is complex and in many cases slower than would be desirable. But neither Facebook nor the rights holders establish differences between some contents and others, that is, some simply withdraw before others because this process ends earlier.