Amid complaints from video creators that their content is being stolen and re-uploaded across Facebook, FB -0.90% the company on Tuesday announced the release of a new rights management tool for video producers and companies that aims to combat the “freebooting” piracy issue.

In a blog post, Facebook said that the tool, called Rights Manager, will allow video creators to “easily upload and maintain a reference library of the video content they want to monitor and protect.” Creators can set rules that either permit or report copies of their work based on criteria like how much of the video has been clipped or how many views it has garnered.

Publishers can use a dashboard to see new matches, filter out copies or grant permission to other pages, Facebook said. The release of Rights Manager comes months after Facebook began testing a beta version of the matching technology with a handful of media companies. Video creators, many of whom make their living on Google’s YouTube through advertising, had griped for months that pirated clips were running wild across Facebook as the social network pushed more into expanding its video business. YouTube faced similar complaints years ago, and a 2007 legal battle against Viacom compelled the video company to develop its own rights management platform. The case was settled in 2014. On Facebook, creators had been left to file “takedown requests” on fraudulent videos, but said that the company’s response to such requests could take hours or days, well beyond the shelf life of a viral video. In the announcement, Facebook said its new tool will also work with its nascent live-streaming push, Facebook Live. “We check every Facebook Live video stream against files in the Rights Manager reference library, and if a match surfaces, we’ll interrupt that live video,” the company said. Creators and publishers can apply for enrollment to have access to the tool. “We are accepting partners into Rights Manager on the basis of their needs,” a Facebook spokeswoman said. Write to Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@wsj.com

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