What about the memes?

Today the Verge reports that Facebook will let people claim ownership of images and issue takedown requests and notes that “The days of reposting images on Instagram might be over”. The article describes a pretty run of the mill ContentID/Facebook rights manager type system that will allow select users to claim ownership of images across Facebook’s platforms. The fact that this emerges now is of course no coincidence but shows that Facebook is preparing for the entry into force of Article 17 of the copyright directive which will almost certainly require them to provide such filtering functionality in the EU.

The Verge is a bit light on details but the bit of info it does contain on the how the tool will deal with the inevitable collisions between ownership claims does not sound terribly sophisticated:

To claim their copyright, the image rights holder uploads a CSV file to Facebook’s Rights Manager that contains all the image’s metadata. They’ll also specify where the copyright applies and can leave certain territories out. Once the manager verifies that the metadata and image match, it’ll then process that image and monitor where it shows up. If another person tries to claim ownership of the same image, the two parties can go back and forth a couple times to dispute the claim, and Facebook will eventually yield it to whoever filed first. If they then want to appeal that decision, they can use Facebook’s IP reporting forms.

“Whoever filed first” is of course not at all relevant when it comes to copyright. Unfortunately there is no further elaboration how the new tool will deal with uses under exceptions / fair use or how it would interfact with Public Domain or freely licensed content, but it seems clear that Instagram’s current culture of freely reposting images is on a collision course with the the realities of automated copyright enforcement as mandated by Article 17.