"We believe that sharing information about (intellectual property) reports we receive from rights holders is an important step toward being more open and clear about how we protect the people and businesses that use our services," Sonderby wrote. The ninth Facebook transparency report also showed that government requests for information about users increased 21 percent worldwide compared with the second half of 2016, from 64,279 to 78,890. For intellectual property disputes, Facebook offers monitoring tools that alert rightsholders to suspected copies of their videos and songs on Facebook and use of their brand. Rightsholders can send takedown requests for unauthorized uses to a team of Facebook content analysts. Entertainment and media industry groups have long expressed frustration with the process, contending that they bear too much of the internet policing burden and that online services should be more proactive about stemming infringement.