Facebook Acquires Source3 To Fight Piracy

Leading social networking site Facebook has acquired US based startup Source3 to weed out pirated content shared without consent. The startup, launched in 2014, builds technology to detect intellectual property that has been shared by Internet users without permission. This intellectual property startup was founded by Patrick Sullivan and Ben Cockerham.

According to reports, Facebook will not only acquire their technology but also some of the core team members. The members joining the Facebook team will be working in their New York office and will help Facebook’s battles against pirated content. After this acquisition Source3 will be fully integrated with Facebook and will not be a standalone startup. The acquisition was announced on Source3’s website but no financial details of the deal were disclosed. According to media reports, Source3 has previously raised $ 4 million in venture capital funding.

Facebook has been struggling to crack down on pirated content for a long time and even introduced ‘Rights Manager Software’ two years ago. This tool allows creators to tag or fingerprint their content similar to YouTube‘s Content ID. This acquisition can help the Facebook team combat piracy on their site better. A Facebook spokesperson said they were excited to work with the Source3 team and learn from the expertise they’ve built in intellectual property, trademarks and copyrights.

According to a report in Recode, the company would like to be a home of professionally produced videos, which is why they had also started paying publishers and movie studios. Video creators had issues publishing their materials on the social networking site as others were able to steal content easily and profit off of them. As a solution to this problem, Facebook also added the option for rights holders to leave their content, pirated or otherwise, on the site and make money off the views generated by the pirates.

In their announcement about the acquisition, Source3 founders said they were excited to join Facebook and bring their IP trademark and copyright expertise to the Facebook team. “We feel great about this next step in our journey, and we thank everyone who helped us get to where we are today – we couldn’t have gotten this far without immense support from our investors, advisers, employees and others. We can’t wait to see what’s next,” they added.

Patrick Sullivan and Ben Cockerham sold their previous company, RightsFlow, which focused on music IP to Google back in 2011.