Facebook's 'Freebooting' Piracy Problem Just Cost Casey Neistat 20 Million Views

Lingering theft issues anger video creators

Casey Neistat, who has 1.5 million YouTube subscribers, recently created a fun Halloween video called "Aladdin in Real Life" with his friend, Jesse Wellens, and they quickly garnered more than 10 million views. The two-minute clip took weeks to complete, as the duo spent significant cash on costumes and orchestrated a high-tech video shoot while interloping through the busy daytime streets of Manhattan, N.Y.

But then they ran into a problem known as "freebooting," which entails republishing videos on social sites without the consent of the folks who made the clips.

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