June 5, 2007 - Fraudulent Activity On Metacafe, Metacafe Policy Options

[Talia]

Hi all,

Over the past few weeks, I have been asked repeatedly about our policy towards fraudulent submissions to Producer Rewards so I wanted to address this issue. Let me first define what we mean by ‘fraud’. I believe ‘fraud’ is committed when the submitter knowingly and intentionally submits something to which he does not hold all the necessary rights.

I’m not talking about something which may arguably be considered ‘Fair Use’. I mean something which is intended to make money for the submitter who is dishonestly posing as the originator of the video. Another definition of fraud is when a submitter actively ‘games’ the system, attempting to artificially inflate the number of views or the rank of his video by continually performing rankable activities on that video.

We are actively watching for both these kinds of fraud and as soon as we have good reason to conclude that fraud has been committed or attempted we act definitively. In addition to proactively looking for fraud we take into account comments or email that is sent to us from members of the community.

We recognize that some members may not be acting in good faith when they make claims against other members, and we investigate claims carefully to eliminate this kind of abuse. Making unsubstantiated or false accusations against another member can also result in suspension of some or all of your privileges on Metacafe.

We reserve the right to take whatever action we deem necessary in response to a fraud investigation. It is our policy not to comment on any ongoing or completed fraud investigation or to publicly disclose the results.

I hope you will appreciate the sensitivity of these cases and respect our need for impartiality when discussions on these topics arise. I believe that the forum is a good place for healthy debate, but I ask that everyone think carefully before throwing around unsubstantiated accusations.

As you know, you can always contact us privately either through the forums or the regular customer support email addresses.

I am happy to answer your questions as always, but I will not talk about individual cases, nor will I explain our fraud detection methods (as this kinds of makes life easier for the fraudsters).

Talia