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"Hide yo' kids, hide yo' wife \u2014 viral videos are climbing into your News Feed, snatching up your content.\nIt's not in your head. Facebook is delivering more videos. A Facebook spokesperson tells Mashable that \"twice as many people now watch videos on Facebook compared to just six months ago.\u201D\nRival Google still dominates the online video market, but Facebook's controversial move toward auto-play last year has made video consumption a more natural part of the News Feed experience. When you pause your scrolling to watch a herd of baby goats or dancing ferrets, Facebook recognizes that, and then delivers even more videos. \nSee also: 20 Things Your Most Annoying Friends Do on Facebook\nThink of it as the modern \"You break it, you buy it.\" You watch it, you see it again and again and again. \nAny Facebook algorithm tweak or feature modification brings out the loophole-seekers. Enter the local radio stations, the body builders and the techno bands. \n\nImage:  Mashable,  Max KnoblauchClever smalltime Facebook Page managers have also set a trap hard to resist: the viral video. \nBy lifting wildly popular videos from YouTube and other sites and uploading the content directly to Facebook, these Pages take up prime real estate in the News Feed. \n\nImage:  Mashable composite.On-brand marketing gets knocked aside when Likes and shares dangle within reach.\nLet's play a game. \nWhat do you associate with adorable kittens? Probably not country music, bodybuilders or Tyrese Gibson. But Louisiana-based country music station 97.7 Mustang FM, professional ab flexer James Ellis and actor Tyrese Gibson all uploaded the same cute cat video to Facebook without permission from the content's owner. \n\nImage: Mashable composite, FacebookThe company that obtained the rights to license the footage confirms to Mashable that none of those three Pages paid for its use.\nThink about the cats, Tyrese. Vin Diesel would never do this. \nEllis, a self-described \"Actor/Fitness Model and follower of JESUS CHRIST,\" has uploaded more than 50 viral videos just since July 19. SteamFeed pointed out that the bodybuilder's strategy has drawn complaints from Facebook users tired of seeing his video uploads in their News Feeds. After complaints, Ellis allegedly added attributions to his video uploads.\nThe Internet isn\u2019t a happy hippie commune where we exchange goods and ideas only for the price of good karma and pot muffins. Money rules and the law still exists, people. \nIn 1998, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) set the ground rules for the distribution of copyrighted material online. The law provides protection for service providers, like Facebook and YouTube, so long as the content supplier provides users an option for removal requests. \nBut the DMCA stipulates that only the content owner can file a request for a takedown. So if Joe Good Citizen wants to police Facebook by reporting possible copyright offenders, Facebook has no legal obligation to remove or investigate the material in question.  \nSee also: The 12 Most Self-Destructive Things You Can Do on Facebook\nThe rule also applies to YouTube, but there's one difference: the barriers content creators face when looking for stolen videos. Facebook has no public search system, meaning that a video owner would likely not see their stolen material until after hundreds or thousands of users already shared it.\nSo until your second cousin re-shares your cat video that Diddy lifted from YouTube, you probably won't know. \nViral videos dominate Internet culture, and as the world's largest social network, Facebook should incorporate video content to encourage users to spend more time on the site. But when brands and personalities use illegally uploaded videos to gain exposure and Likes, regular users end up repeatedly seeing the same content. \nPages treat viral content like salt \u2014 sprinkled a little here and there, mixed in with self-promotion and inspirational quotes. \nAntoine Dodson, a man who owes his notoriety to a viral video, runs his Facebook page like a curation service, sharing videos, advice animals and other 4chan-style imagery with his nearly 1 million fans. Dodson didn't invent content curation without attribution and the problem extends beyond Facebook to the Internet as a whole. (Or, in this case, a hole of clickbait.)\nFacebook covers itself on the legal obligation to remove offending content, but can it or should it do more? If the company shut down a few popular Pages for multiple copyright violations, it could scare copycats from trying the same Likes-gathering method. Or Facebook could be accused of trying to change the way Internet users consume content. \nPages pooped in the Facebook sandbox. \nBONUS: 5 Super Weird Facts About Facebook\n\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/08/02/facebook-viral-video-problem/>