The Silicon Review ^Asia

In a fight against pirated content, social networking giant Facebook has made an acquisition of a US-based startup Source3 to aid it weed out pirated videos and other content that users share without permission. The startup builds technology to sense intellectual property that has been shared by Internet users without permission. As per a report in ReCode on 24 July, 2017, Facebook was getting hold of both the technology and some of the core team members of Source3.“We’re excited to work with the Source3 team and learn from the expertise they’ve built in intellectual property, trademarks and copyright. As always, we are focused on ensuring we serve our partners well,” the report quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying. As per the report, the employees who will join Facebook from Source3 would work out of the company’s New York office. The attainment makes Source3 completely included with Facebook and does not make it a separate startup. It has by now taken down its website and Twitter account.

However, no details on the deal terms have been made but according to media reports, Source3 has elevated just $4 million in venture capital funding. Facebook has been making struggle to break down on pirated content for a long time. The company had in past announced “Rights Manager” technology to sense and eliminates video clips shared by people who do not have rights to the video. But the new acquisition infers that Facebook’s “Rights Manager” technology has not been much of a success.

Previously this year, the social media giant added another option for rights holders: “Leave the content up, and make money off the views that these pirates are generating for you.”