Creators on Facebook and Instagram no longer have to worry about their properiatery images being misused, posted or embedded somewhere else without their permission. Facebook has extended its Rights Manager feature, which is found in the Creators Studio for video content, and has introduced ‘Rights Manager for Images’– a feature that will help creators protect and manage their images from being copied, embedded or posted somewhere else.
In a blog post, Facebook said, ” We want to ensure Facebook is a safe and valuable place for creators to share their content. That’s why we built tools like Rights Manager in Creator Studio to help creators and publishers who have a large or growing catalog of content better control when, how and where their content is shared across Facebook and Instagram. Today, we are introducing Rights Manager for Images, a new version of Rights Manager”.
The Rights Manager for Images will be available in the same place where it was for videos, i.e. Creator Studio. To avail this offering, page admins will have to submit an application for the content they want to be protected. This application would have to include a copy of the image and a CSV file with image metadata. These images will further be stored in a library which will be used to locate matching content on Facebook and Instagram.
Additional settings will allow creators to choose if they want their ownership to apply worldwide or in certain regions only.
Once a matching content is detected on either Facebook or Instagram, the respective page admin or the right holder will be informed. To proceed, they will have three options – either monitor the content, block the content’s use or add an ownership credit link to that post.
Facebook’s other content management tools, such as the IP reporting system and repeat infringer policy that help combat infringement, is also available to use for reporting misuse of content by users.
These measures might be a Facebook’s response to the recent controversy surrounding Newsweek and its use of a photographer’s image on its website. When denied the permission to do so, it uploaded the image as an embed from Instagram on the website, which was apparently legal. However, Instagram later clarified that the embedding feature does not include a license, so anyone using the image would require a license to embed the post anywhere.
