Image: Maurizio Pesce/Flickr
Facebook announced a new technology this week that will allow the company to more easily detect pirated videos and quickly remove them.The video matching system put into place Thursday will allow content creators to quickly seek out matches of their videos across Facebook. It has been developed after a year of aggressive growth in Facebook's video content, in which the company has encouraged its 1.5 billion users to upload videos directly to the site.The move is a response to user complaints about freebooting, a practice in which third parties steal video content from elsewhere and upload it to Facebook, potentially racking up huge view counts. It's a huge problem for many content creators, as It's Okay to Be Smart's Joe Hanson detailed in a long post on the topic, which includes the example of one YouTube producer having his video stolen and reshared by a UK tabloid, which racked up 18 million (free, stolen) views on Facebook before a copyright claim kicked in."It's not fair to those who work hard to create amazing videos," Facebook wrote in a blog post on Thursday. "We want creators to get credit for the videos that they own."Facebook's current system relies largely on user flagging of videos and running content through the Audible Magic system, a technology that matches audio "fingerprints" to identify and block unauthorized videos before they are uploaded. Facebook says the new system is more comprehensive and is comparable to YouTube's content ID system.The company said it is testing the beta version with select media companies and other video creators, and will be expanding the service over the coming months.