Facebook Freebooting - Smarter Every Day 128

Hey, it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I want to do something a little bit different today; let's start with a story.

Once there was a kingdom where wealth was determined by what sheep you owned. There was a rich man who had many, many sheep. Even his sheep were rich. There was also a peasant family who only had one sheep, but they loved her very much. The father of the house wanted her to be the very best sheep she could be, so he spent lots of time with her. The sheep was basically a part of the family, and it participated in almost every aspect of their lives.

One day, a traveller came to town to visit the rich man, and they became business partners. That evening, they were hungry, but the rich man was unwilling to take from his own flock, so the traveller pointed out to the peasant sheep. The rich man's cook then took the sheep and cut out the tasty parts. Together, the rich man and the traveller enjoyed the feast, and their bellies were full. This crushed the family. The father asked the rich man for another sheep, but he was ignored.

Oh man, that's sad. But it's real. The sheep is your YouTube video, and the rich man is Facebook. The traveller is someone who uploads your video to Facebook so the two of them can use what's yours and make money off of it.

How do internet videos make money? You've seen the ads at the beginning of the video, and you've heard that people make a living on YouTube, right? But what you don't know is it takes a ridiculous number of these ads in order to make any kind of significant income. This is why people jump at the opportunity to get a sponsor for their videos. In fact, there will be a sponsor at the end of this very video.

Sometimes the videos themselves take a lot of time and money to create. Other times, people just upload a video on a whim and have a viral success on their hands. Either way, the people made the video, and they deserve to reap any success or profit that comes from it, right?

Here's the problem though. Sometimes, people will steal a video and then re-upload it as if they created it themselves. Flula is a German DJ friend of mine who uploaded this hilarious video to YouTube called "Jennifer is a Party Pooper." This thing got over five million views in four years, which sounds awesome until you realize that a verified Facebook page downloaded this video and then re-uploaded it into the Facebook player, where it received the same five million views in four days.

Facebook's algorithm prefers videos that are uploaded into its video player. Facebook ran ads on five million views of Flula's video and made money off of it. I wonder what Flula has to say about this.

It's like I made a present for my friends, but then another person stole my present, wrapped it up, and said, "Hey everyone, look at this present I made for you!" Doh. They ate his sheep. Eventually, he got Facebook to take the video down, and I'm sure they were happy to do it because they had already made their money.

This is a serious issue, and it's worth talking about. It's even been given a name by Brady Haran from Hello Internet. - Freebooting. - Freebooting. - Freebooting. - Freebooting is the act of taking a creation that someone else has made and then using it as if you made it, in order to profit.

Brady has a dozen channels that are really high quality, so he's freebooted often. This is a video he created of his dog Audrey playing with bubbles. You'll notice that somebody else uploaded it, and Facebook's running ads on it. 150,000 people have seen this. This one's been viewed 1.2 million times, but it's been shared 34,000 times. That's about 34.5 views per share. This one doesn't even have a view count on it. If you look, it's been shared over a quarter million times, and if we multiply times that previous ratio, that's over 9.1 million views.

What is happening? Smarter Every Day has also been a victim to this. In September, I uploaded the tattoo in slow motion video, and it was my largest success to date. The largest privately owned publishing company in Europe, called Bauer Media Group, downloaded the video, cut out all the educational content, cut out my sponsor, and cut out all links back to Smarter Every Day, and then re-uploaded it to their verified Facebook page.

I filled out forms, I sent emails, I exhausted every option given to me by both of these multi-billion dollar corporations. It was the most successful post ever made to their Facebook page. So as I'm trying to get it taken down over here, someone within the company is re-uploading it and saying, "In case you missed it."

It wasn't until the followers of Smarter Every Day on Twitter re-tweeted this tweet over 100 times that Facebook responded. Which is interesting. The slower and more drawn out the process is, the more ads they can run against the video before they finally shut it down. By the time it was eventually taken down, the video had been viewed on Facebook over 17 million times.

I can tell you this. 17 million views would have been some serious, serious college fund money. So after 17 million views, this email was sent from Dwayne at community operations at Facebook: "We understand this action to resolve your intellectual property issue." Facebook is currently designed so that when you finally do get that viral video, you can see all of the financial benefit that you've dreamed of whisked away in other people's Facebook news feeds, and you'll be stuck with an email saying that they understand that they've solved your intellectual property issue.

I am not trying to get you to feel sorry for Smarter Every Day. I am so incredibly blessed, and I am grateful for everything that I have been entrusted with. But I understand also that not everyone has a channel with 2 million intelligent subscribers. So this happens thousands of times every day to people who have no voice, and they have no recourse.

They try to make this sound all complicated, but it's not. Even my children can understand what's going on here. (Destin) "But they were hungry, so it's OK?" - "No, it's not." - "Why not?" - "Because it's someone else's sheep." - "Yeah, but they were hungry." - "And they should replace it, the traveller should." - "Why should the traveller replace it?" - "Because he pointed it out." - "But what if I told you that every single day the rich man gets another traveller to bring him somebody else's sheep?"

What do you think about that? - "That is enough to go to jail." - "Why?" - "Because he's stealing every day." - "Oh." It's pretty simple, isn't it? - "But what if there are no jails?" - "You know he's got a good point."

What if there are no consequences for freebooting other people's content? I mean, people are telling me that there's no way an individual like you or me can go up against multiple multi-billion dollar organizations. But is that true? And we're gonna be ruined financially. Really? I mean, if a six-year-old and an eight-year-old can understand the social injustice that's occurred, we have laws. Don't you think a court of law can do the same thing?

Maybe it's just that doing the right thing is sometimes difficult and scary. As of the upload of this video, the two people that ate my sheep, the rich man and the traveller, have refused to compensate, which I get. That's really smart actually. Drag it out, make it hurt, hope that the offended party loses interest.

Facebook freebooting has got to stop, and you can help. Any time you see freebooted content, anywhere on the internet, do these three things. Capture, comment, contact. Capture the freebooting. Take a screen shot, or if you really want to document it, video screen capture the freebooter stealing the content.

Comment on the freebooted material. State that it's stolen and point people back to the original source. Contact the content creator and then give them the freebooting evidence as well as the link to the freebooting. The creator can then decide what legal action to take. Doing this will let the content creator spend more time with their sheep.

I apologize if you detected any negativity in this video; that's not the intent. I just want to be a voice for people without a voice. For example, Gordon, the guy that creates music for Smarter Every Day. His music was also freebooted, and as you can see here, it makes him really sad. Here's the deal. I pay Gordon, so we're gonna pay the bills right now with our sponsor, which is Audible.com.

If you want to support us, go to audible.com/smarter, download any audio book you choose. I recommend Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Let me tell you why. When I was getting ready to make this video, I listened to Ender's Game, and it totally pumped me up. Ender is a weak little boy that doesn't like to fight, but people always try to get after him. He uses his superior intellect, even though he's weaker, to defeat these foes, and he's so good at it that the whole human race selects him to use techniques, tactics, and procedures to defend them against an invading alien species.

It's so well written that the United States Marine Corps uses it as a recommended book. It's amazing. So, go get Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It really helped me understand how a weak man could even approach a superior foe. I recommend it. Even if you just read it. Just go experience Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. You can get it for free at audible.com/smarter.

Again, thank you for sticking with me. I'm Destin, you're getting Smarter Every Day. Have a good one.