Earlier this week, a stolen music video went viral on Facebook. By the time it was taken down, it had reached 3 million views and was shared nearly 5 thousand times. The Youtube original still has under 5 thousand views, and the original creators have received minimal viral attention.
Sucks! Unfortunately, this phenomenon is called freebooting and it’s digital plagiarism.
Here are 4 steps to protect your videos from getting freebooted:
1. Reinforce your brand with a graphic element such as a watermark or logo. Once you have a watermark just add it to the background of your video. Watermarks are nearly impossible to edit out and ensure that your brand is visible in your video.
2. Make sure to add a copyright notice in the closing of your video and in the video description, so a freebooter can’t claim they didn’t know it was yours.
3. If your song has lyrics, post them in the video description. Someone searching up the lyrics will see the original video at the top.
4. Promote your music video as hard as you can. Freebooters like to target under-promoted content with enough entertainment value to go viral. If you promote your videos all over the web to the best of your ability freebooters will know to stay away.
To learn more about viral video promotion, visit www.promolta.com
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