Copying someone else’s content is unethical but did you ever imagine that downloading a Youtube video and sharing it on your Facebook page could stop floods of donations from going to orphans?
A Facebook community page copied a social media awareness video which was created by the Prague-based Hayot Films video production studio as part of its #Likelife campaign, which has two main objectives:
- Hayot Films will donate the Youtube monetization money to charita.CZ – a non-profit organization that supports orphans in need, regardless of age, gender, religion, or ethnicity.
- People who watch the video or share the direct link will automatically become members of the project, raising online awareness about the cause. Read more about the project #LikeLife
Original Video from Youtube
How Can Stealing Content Harm a Charitable Cause?
The campaign video went viral after being copied by the Facebook page, which probably found it an opportunity to gain more views and likes out of this professionally executed video despite the disclaimer that clearly states the video’s cause. Stolen Facebook Video Views
Digital Boom contacted HayotFilms to check whether the page allegedly stole their video negatively affected the campaign reach. HeyotFilms responded:
“It’s sad that our video on Youtube is not getting enough views because it’s monetized on Youtube, and we wanted to give money from this for charity. We can’t control the Internet; not only does that Facebook page publish the video on their own page, but also on other pages. Our video was published in 3 languages on Youtube, and the summary already got about 40 000 views. Our goals were to show this video for more people to think about their social life and the second one is help for charity. The first one is ok; we already got more than 1,500,000 views (updated), the second one is not good. We really wanted to give money from monetization on Youtube for charity. We’ll see how much we will gain.”HayotFilms Reply
How to protect your copyrights on social media?
You always need to monitor your work online, check if someone copied it and didn’t give you the proper credit, or if that infringes your copyrights, so you can quickly contact the platform help desk to take down the stolen pieces and save your business from losing opportunities because of internet thieves.
We strongly argue HayotFilms to report trademark and content infringement using this form.