Facebook has just launched its “Rights Manager” tool to grant ownership control over to the user for images published on the Facebook and Instagram platforms. The Verge reports that Facebook has partnered with certain unnamed innovative tech solutions for this offering. This innovative tool will give content creators of both Facebook and Instagram platforms rights to claim ownership of their own images as it currently does for music and video rights.
How Does the “Rights Manager” Work
To access the “Rights Manager” tool, Facebook Page admins first need to apply for the content they’ve created and want to protect. Rights Manager will find matching content on Facebook and Instagram.
- Upload a CSV file to Facebook’s Rights Manager that contains all the image’s metadata. Adjust settings to match things like ownership applicable worldwide or only in certain locations and so on.
- Once you hit “Apply for Rights Manager” the internal algorithm verifies the metadata and matches the image.
- Once the process is complete it then displays the image and pages where it is showing up.
What if two parties claim ownership?
If another person claims ownership of the same image, then the two parties can dispute the claim. However, if no settlement is agreed upon, Facebook will eventually bestow it to the one who filed first. This decision can again be appealed in Facebook’s IP reporting forms.
Copyright and ownership of content has been a prolonged issue especially on social media platforms where sharing and posting is just two-clicks away. However, Facebook acknowledges the fact that quality content creation is a cumbersome task and thus, it is clearly the intellectual property of its creator. It believes that upending such solutions will put content creators in charge of their content and help clear the clutter of aggregated content (image) sharing and publishing, which at times robs them of their ownership, attribution, and credit.
