MANILA, Philippines – Facebook is stepping up its piracy-fighting efforts by acquiring Source3, a startup developing technology to detect intellectual property shared by users without the original owner’s consent.

Recode reported the acquisition on Monday, July 24 (Tuesday, July 25 in Manila), with Facebook acquiring the technology and some of the team members behind Source3.

The employees joining Facebook from Source3 will work out of the company’s New York office, though how many team members it retained, as well the details of the deal itself, were not publicly made known. 

In a statement on their site, Source3 said it was “excited to bring our IP, trademark and copyright expertise to the team at Facebook and serve their global community of two billion people, who consume content, music, videos and other IP every day.”

Facebook would probably like to propel more users into viewing video content or music content on their site. Finding ways to track down the rights owners of intellectual properties shown on the site to properly compensate them (and therefore punish content thieves) is one way to convince content creators they’re serious about the push to stop piracy on Facebook and get content creators on board. – Rappler.com