Copyright Scammers Weaponized Meta's Rights Manager with Backdating Exploit * TorrentFreak

Copyright Scammers Weaponized Meta’s Rights Manager with Backdating Exploit

Similar to other social media platforms, creators on Facebook and Instagram have to battle a constant stream of copyright infringing material.

To facilitate this process, the company has rolled out several anti-piracy initiatives in recent years.

Both Facebook and Instagram use a “Rights Manager” tool, which is an automated system that runs copyright checks. After rightsholders upload reference files, the system detects infringing material and allows owners to take down or monetize this content.

Rights Manager has been working without much noise for close to a decade. According to Meta’s latest transparency report, Rights Manager is part of a broader enforcement system that proactively removes millions of infringing posts from Facebook and Instagram every month.

Rights Manager’s Backdating Lawsuits

The automated copyright enforcement system is not without flaws. In India, for example, several lawsuits filed at the Delhi High Court alleged that the same copyright enforcement system can be turned against the creators it is meant to protect.

The Rights Manager exploit relies on Facebook’s desktop "Edit Post" feature. When a user edits an existing Facebook post and replaces its attached image or video, the platform keeps the original publication date. This means that users and Meta’s enforcement systems will see the content as older than it really is.

Scammers can allegedly exploit this weakness, Bar and Bench first reported. They can edit their older Facebook pages to add videos, reels, or photos they copied from other creators. To Instagram and Facebook it will appear that their content is older, so they can use it to claim ownership through Rights Manager.

As a result, the scammers can reportedly monetize videos of the original creators, while adding strikes to their accounts too.

Financial educator and entrepreneur Pushkar Raj Thakur says at least 36 of his videos were taken down worldwide this way. His suit argues Meta acted on the claims without checking the rightsholder, metadata or edit history of the posts.

Meta Rights Manager Lawsuit

Thakur took the matter to the Delhi High Court in May as part of a broader lawsuit about false claims. Early on, Meta’s counsel said the company needed to investigate, but the false claims did not stop right away.

In a follow-up hearing, Meta offered the court a series of assurances. It agreed not to remove Thakur’s videos over copyright strikes, not to close his account over repeat strikes, and to restore the deleted content.

Thakur is not backing down, seeking roughly 2 crore rupees (about $210,000) in damages. He also wants the court to order Meta to build safeguards into Rights Manager, including KYC checks, timestamp protections, and metadata verification.

Interestingly, Thakur says Meta denied him access to Rights Manager to protect his own brand, even as the scammers used the very same tool against him.

Meta Must Hand Over the Data

Thakur’s lawsuit is not the only one. Another creator, Neeraj Joshi, filed a similar complaint over the same backdating trick, and this case already resulted in a more actionable order.

On July 9, Justice Jyoti Singh required Meta to preserve Joshi’s verified Instagram account and to hand over the basic subscriber information and IP logs tied to the fraudulent claims within three weeks.

Those records could reveal who is behind the scheme and Joshi’s request for an interim injunction will be heard on August 5.

A Third Case Targets the Rules

The two lawsuits are not the only pressure on Meta. On July 15, another creator, Nitin Joshi, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) that goes after the legal framework itself.

The petition asks the court to set up a Special Investigation Team to probe what Joshi describes as an organized extortion racket, where syndicates file bogus strikes through bot accounts and then demand payment to withdraw them.

It also challenges Rules 3(1)(c) and 4 of India’s IT Rules, arguing they let platforms disable accounts without notice, without naming the complainant, and without checking whether the claimant owns the content.

Joshi wants a forensic audit of Instagram’s copyright strike system, as well as regular transparency reports on repeat complainants. This case remains in its early stages, and it has yet to be heard.

Patching An Exploitable Loophole

For now, the three cases leave Meta with an unusual problem. The same automated system that’s used to remove millions of infringing posts is allegedly being used by scammers to monetize copyright infringement.

Monthly proactive Instagram removals

Whether Meta has already addressed the loophole, and whether the scammers will be unmasked, remains to be seen. The company has yet to respond to the allegations in court, and it hasn’t commented publicly on the claims.

In any...