Facebook Acquires Source3 to Crack Down on Illegally Shared Content

The illegal sharing of intellectual property is a hallmark of the modern internet era. Despite it being blatantly against the law, myriad users continue to participate in the act.

It’s been a problem for Facebook who—with two billion active members—plays host to a wealth of content, a percentage of which no doubt circulates in ways it shouldn’t.

For this reason and possibly others, the social network has acquired Source3, a startup that “set out to recognize, organize and analyze branded intellectual property in user-generated content,” according to its founders.

Source3, which “built an end-to-end platform to manage online IP and establish relationships with brands,” announced its exit online, while a spokesperson for Facebook said they hope to learn from the startup team’s “expertise.”

“We wanted to let everyone know that we’ve decided to continue our journey with Facebook,” wrote cofounders Patrick Sullivan, Benjamin Cockerham, Scott Sellwood and Tom Simon. “We’re 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.”

Source3 was founded in 2014 and raised a seed round in 2015.