Seaside Heights Photographer Fights Facebook For Her Video Rights

SEASIDE HEIGHTS, NJ — As often as possible, Jean L. Coccaro strolls the boardwalk and the Seaside Heights area, capturing the lights and sights of the town and sharing her photos on Facebook.

May 18 was no different. She stood on the boardwalk and filmed the light from the full moon dancing on the ocean, zoomed in with her Sony Cybershot point-and-shoot camera and captured the face of the moon with its craters, then out and over to the neon lights of Casino Pier, then back to the moon and the ocean. She uploaded the 2-minute, 43-second video to Facebook and then went to bed.

The next morning, she was met with a message from Facebook. Her video had been taken down, blocked from publication due to an automated Facebook tool that's designed to flag copyrighted content.

"I was shocked," Coccaro said. "Shocked and angry," that she had been accused of stealing someone's intellectual property.

The automated tool had matched 19 seconds of Coccaro's video to videos owned by four entities: Viralhog, a third-party video licensing platform; CONCACAF, the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (yes, the soccer organization); NRL - National Rugby League; and MYTF1 antipirate, a video-on-demand company based in France that hosts video replays similar to Netflix and Hulu.

Facebook, in response to a Patch email about the issue, said it would look into the matter.

"I couldn't believe it," she said. And the part that angered her most: it appeared someone would be making money off her video, because Viralhog licenses videos submitted by its users and charges other organizations to use them.

"I've always loved taking pictures," Coccaro said earlier this week. "You're capturing that moment in time that will be forever lost."

Taking photos of Seaside Heights, where she spent many years making memories as a child, holds special place in her heart. Coccaro lives in South Plainfield but owns a condo in Seaside, and spends as much time as possible in the borough. She shares many of her photos in the Facebook group Seaside Heights Boardwalk, of which she's an administrator.

"I wasn't trying to make money off the video," Coccaro said. "I just post my stuff to give people joy."

Her photos have become so popular that she formed her own photography company, Memories by JLCoccaro, and her work has graced brochures and marketing materials for the borough, as well as other publications in the area. Some of her photos are on the walls in local restaurants and shops. And some are for sale in the gift shop Coccaro's sister, Theresa Scala, recently opened in the borough, Spiaggia Arts. The shop carries unique coastal gifts, including soy and coconut candles that Scala makes.

But mostly, Coccaro shares her photos so people can enjoy them and reminisce about days they spent at the shore.

"I don't do it for the money; I do it because I get such pleasure out of it," Coccaro said. "Someone was trying to make money off my video. I was pissed."

She contacted Facebook to dispute the claim, but so far has gotten nowhere, not even an acknowledgment of the dispute. She tried to call Viralhog's offices but reached only voicemail. "I wanted to talk to a human being, not voicemail," she said. Finally, Coccaro sent an email to its copyright team, which responded within hours and removed the claim that it owned the video.

"My question is how do you determine who owns a video?" she said in her email to the company, demanding her video be released and threatening legal action. "Do you ask for proof prior to deciding to block usage from the original owner?"

Viralhog responded that her video had been flagged by "automated 'fingerprinting' tools provided by Facebook" that are designed to "detect and claim infringing use of our content."

"The system is imperfect and sometimes generates false positives," the email from the copyright team said. "This is rare." The email went on to say Viralhog had "modified the reference file (fingerprint) for the moon video" and apologized for "any inconvenience the content ID has caused."

In an email to Patch, Viralhog's copyright team had a similar response, saying it uses "automated 'fingerprinting' tools provided by Facebook and YouTube to detect and claim infringing use of our content."

"With this, errors can always occur," the email said. But Viralhog did not explain what exactly the "fingerprint" consists of. Original digital media contains embedded data, called metadata, that can include a variety of information, including where an image was taken, what type of camera was used, and rights information.

Ryan Bartholemew, the founder of Viralhog, said in a follow-up email to Patch that the "fingerprints" — which he referred to as "reference files" contain unique information but the algorithm of the automated tool "mistook the moon image in our video for the moon image in Ms. Coccaro's and deemed her content as stolen."

"Two different people with different cameras can film the same moon (or other object) and have full and proper exclusive rights to their respective videos, but it's not always easy to distinguish them when they are similar," he said.

"I would like to emphasize that ViralHog did *not* issue a takedown, block, nor take any other irreversible or damaging action on her content. It was automatically marked as a match ("claim" in this case)," he said.

With the explosion of "viral" media and digital reproduction, many industries have become very aggressive about protecting copyrighted material. The music and film industries have been battling pirated material for years, and professional photographers find copies of stolen photos published in a variety of places all the time. It's why, if you upload a video to Facebook that contains recorded music such as provided by a DJ at a wedding, chances are it will be muted unless you can prove you have written permission to publish the music.

"While it is easy to cast stones at Facebook for having an imperfect algorithm, it's important to note that such content-matching is a very new and rapidly developing field, and there's an inherent need to balance the sensitivity of the algorithm with the interests of thorough protection," Bartholemew said. "For example, if the algorithm is too sensitive, it will generate false positives as exemplified by this situation. However, if it is not sensitive enough, then it becomes very easy for those intentionally infringing to modify content subtly to escape detection. It's a challenging task to find the perfect balance."

Coccaro said she's experienced digital theft herself. She now watermarks her photos to deter people from trying to pass her photos off as theirs.

"Sometimes I put it right across the middle of a photo," she said.

But it's perplexing to her how a video she took on her personal camera and uploaded could somehow be flagged digitally, especially by a soccer organization and a rugby organization. Coccaro was grateful that Viralhog responded so quickly. But she was frustrated that attempts to dispute the copyright issue with Facebook remain unresolved.

Coccaro said the incident has made her think twice about sharing her videos on Facebook. Though she does get paid for some of the work she does, it's not about money; it's about sharing the beauty she sees in the town she loves and the connections it has created with so many people who reach out to praise her work.

"They don't realize how much joy I get in seeing people enjoy it," Coccaro said. "I do it for the joy."

Note: This article has been updated with comment from Viralhog's founder and to clarify that Coccaro did not leave messages with the company that were not returned. Patch regrets the lack of clarity on that point.

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