Pirated Courses on Udemy
medium.com
medium.com
Hey @udemy - For the third time this year, my content
is being stolen and sold on your site. Don't use Udemy,
folks.
[1] So @udemy, 373 users signed up for that
stolen series at $19 - or a total of $7,087.
Update on the Udemy selling my stolen content
issue: they finally responded, and will not
reimburse me, unless there is a court ruling.
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/649933605305774081
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/649936961105432576
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/649937073407979520
EDIT: People are making a lot of claims that Udemy are profiting from this but no one has linked to anything to indicate that when content is removed if the people who paid for it who can no longer access the content are issued refunds or not.
Does anyone have any information to suggest that Udemy isnt refunding users?
Last time I checked, users are sued for thousands of dollars per infringing instance, held up in court.
Why shouldn't that hold for a COMPANY doing it? Seems a little unreasonable to me.
Edit: and for people down-voting, please explain why?
I see the point you're making though (copyright violation by a for-profit company is just wrong, both morally and legally), and i upvoted to compensate.
But this is the exact opposite. This is a company flagrantly copying someones work without permissions.
And in ACADEMIA.
IIRC, you could be thrown out of school for plagiarism, we shouldn't disregard an academic institution doing this exact thing.
It's a problem that's explained and handled by the DMCA, the issue is making sure the company actually follows through with handling requests promptly and accurately.
But what difference does it make - it's the classic user provided content model and all the issues it comes with that's causing the problem here. No company, academic or otherwise, wants infringement and if there was a perfect solution then everyone would use it, however it's just not feasible to be perfectly defensive and catch everything.
They do have > 500 employees so it's a company big enough to have checks in place with other video providers to catch basic things like this but still, it's a much harder problem than people think.
If you'd like an example, Banks won't even OPEN an account in states that have legalized recreational marijuana, simply because it's still illegal federally, and they're avoiding liability.
I just thought I'd share, since I have firsthand experience in that particular industry (online payment processing).
I'm not saying they are immune to everything, just that the accepted and realistic option for any service that accepts user provided content is to handle takedown requests. It does place the burden on the copyright owner but it's the process we have so if Udemy or anyone else does follow this accurately then what is the problem?
Though, I will note that Udemy does have a designated agent in regards to DMCA Safe Harbor, so the OP may want to check that they submitted complains the correct place:
> Via E-mail: copyright@udemy.com[1]
This may even be criminal copyright infringment under 18 U.S. Code § 2319 (Criminal infringement of a copyright) if the total retail value exceeds $2500.
Get a lawyer. This looks winnable.
>You must register your copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office before you are legally permitted to bring a lawsuit to enforce it. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_registration#Require... [2] http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/copyright-registratio...
You meant "linearly", right?
this is why, I believe, it's actually against copyright law to use an open source project that doesn't include a license.
It's not open source if it doesn't include a license stating that it is.
I'm not a huge OSI fan, so when I say this, it's not coming from a place of ideology. It's just historical fact.
† The organization didn't exist yet, but it was founded later that month.
OP was saying that there is a provision in the law that allows you to claim 3x the allowable damages if you take the time to register with the copyright office and pay the filing fee.
Udemy being active in many jurisdictions I imagine parallel cases or forum shopping might be worthwhile. Particularly an international firm might be able to direct the case to somewhere that values personal rights above those of corporations which might enable you to hit Udemy hard enough that they'll care to do something to prevent it happening in the future.
(c) Information Residing on Systems or Networks At Direction of Users.—
"(1)In general.—A service provider shall not be liable for monetary relief, or, except as provided in subsection (j), for injunctive or other equitable relief, for infringement of copyright by reason of the storage at the direction of a user of material that resides on a system or network controlled or operated by or for the service provider, if the service provider—"
...
"(B) does not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity"[1]
That's the killer. This service not only charges, they charge on a per-course basis. That's direct financial benefit from the infringing activity.
That seems relatively easy to weasel your way out of. Just sell 'download tokens' which enable the user to download any course on the site they want. Whatever legal argument YouTube is using to protect themselves from this with their new premium subscription would also have to apply here.
I would say that it is clear that _if_ YT is breaking even or making a profit via ad impressions providing the service that they provide then it is _indirectly_ benefiting. No, they are not directly monetizing the (alleged copyright infringing) content but they traffic is driven to their site and eyeballs continue to be view pages because of said (alleged copyright infringing) content which in turn is monetized via ad impressions.
Which is why I have no problem with people running an ad blocker.
Remember: this should be your first step. If you want to resolve it amicably let your lawyer communicate that for you.
How much are you planning to win to justify that?
In any case, almost always a consultation is free. Just ask, and they'll make sure the litigation is worth your time/money.
Also, lawyers have different payment structures (a percentage instead of hourly) and won't always charge for a consultation. Maybe writing a nasty letter on lawyer letterhead is enough--they might do it for free or bill you 1/4 hour. See if your workplace has free legal council as a benefit.
F*ck you. Pay me. is a really good video I see posted on here periodically: https://vimeo.com/22053820 Lawyers are there to make you money--not take your money.
Hey guess what, Silicon Valley has been doing this for nearly 20 years to other people. Funny how the HN crowd gets riled up when it happens to programmers.
Movies cost tens of millions to make and employ hundreds if not thousands. Tv shows are maybe an order of magnitude smaller, records maybe one more. Any of those media products blow these aggrieved programmers out of the water, impact wise.
But the founders of YouTube -- who played this little copyright game like a fiddle -- are heroes in the Valley. So are the founders of Napster, one of whom helped get Facebook going.
I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.
You'll also hear a lot of libertarian and/or fluffy pseudo-socialist arguments for abolishing IP law when this stuff comes up. Information wants to be free, man!
But when it pertains to a programmer, a developer, an academic, etc., I do often see a very different attitude on display. You can see it in this thread. One of the top replies right now is about how the OP probably has an actionable DMCA claim. I thought the DMCA was Satan...? I guess that's only if certain kinds of people use it.
I think it boils down to a kind of classism or cultural/vocational tribalism. Programmers and academics are members of our class/tribe, and their works are worthy of protection and compensation. But writers, actors, producers, musicians, etc. are not and they can go busk on street corners. I don't think most people realize they're doing this, but they are. They've just never stopped to reflect on it or to unpack this nonsense.
There are exceptions, but dig up any thread around here on Popcorn Time or The Pirate Bay and you will see what I mean. Variants of "IP law should not exist" or "fuck the artists" is 9:1 the dominant opinion, with people putting forward a different view often getting down voted to the lightest shades of grey.
I say this as someone who used to believe this stuff until I reflected on it and thought about the implications and learned a bit more about how the world actually works. Abolishing copyright will only benefit the big content aggregators and vertically integrated delivery/streaming services, who will now be able to monetize everything in any way they want without paying anyone for it. Artists will starve. Most will leave the profession. Music usually comes up in these threads but musicians won't be the most fucked -- at least musicians can tour. The most fucked profession will be writing. When was the last time you attended a paid recital of a novel by its author?
Everyone agrees that selling pirated content is wrong. Hell, most pirates would agree to that. You can say it's a shitty attitude to have, but it's a consistent one: "Piracy is OK as long as you don't resell what you pirate" is internally consistent, even if you think it's morally wrong.
Similarly, people seem to be consistently against plagiarism, which is apparently at issue here as well. Again, the stance "Piracy is OK but don't pass pirated works off as your own" is internally consistent, even if you think it's morally wrong.
I'm all for technology moving fast, even breaking things. I just want those agents of disruption to spend as much time cleaning up the mess they create in the process.
People pirating entertainment isn't exactly "the free market" in action, but it's close. The common denominator is people doing what they want to, when no one intervenes in their activities.
So if there's nothing to deter people from pirating movies, or to punish them for it, then they'll go ahead and pirate movies. The risk is really small, and the reward is (practically) instant gratification. Very few would pass that up.
On the one hand, I think IP laws shouldn't exist. They're not meant to benefit the creators anyway, but the entertainment industry BigCorps instead.
On the other hand, I think it's wrong, to a small extent, to pirate movies or music or anything else someone has created and put up for sale.
There's a deal available to you, and it's up to you whether you'll take it. You get something, the creator gets money, and both are more or less happy. But if you circumvent the deal by downloading the product instead, that's comparable to stealing without the creator actually losing the product.
Of course, the entertainment industry equates pirating with actual stealing, because it's more impactful that way. That's dishonest too.
But all in all, people will act according to incentives, and they will pursue their personal gain and the satisfaction of their wants and needs. Nothing's going to change that, so it's pointless to even try.
Ultimately IP laws do way more harm than good, and they're not meant to benefit us little guys anyway.
Think of all the patent lawsuits flying around in the US, or that piece of shit Martin Shkreli charging outrageous prices for drugs people need to survive, etc.
All of that follows from IP laws existing too. So it's not just about "creators" getting what they deserve, it's all the scummy other stuff too.
Besides, what anyone deserves for his creation, is whatever he can get people to voluntarily pay for it. Nothing more, nothing less. That's something to keep in mind too. If there's no market for someone's creation, that doesn't mean there should be legislation that makes people pay for it.
Alright, I guess that's enough rambling now.
The point of my post was a business profiting from pirates. The people who make the choice to forego bittorrent and just post the pirated stuff for a profit. THAT... is my point.
Yeah, that's a scuzzy thing to do.
Piracy by most people is a failure of the market to provide. Look at the most pirated content: movies, music, television. All of these have a common vein; traditionally these media are distributed in specific and timed ways, usually at different times around the world, at different prices and at different venues, and all of it for no real reason.
Why should a hardcore fan of Metallica have to wait another three weeks for their new CD just because he lives in a different country?
Why should someone who loves Peter Jackson's movies have to sit and watch his friends in the United States see the movie he can't for another four weeks because he doesn't live in the right spot?
It's all ancient, trivial nonsense and was treated as such. I heard this so many times from me and other people like me: I would totally pay for this, but I have no way of doing so. Such rigid controls on availability of easily pirated content breed piracy and make criminals out of people who otherwise would never have been.
And neither it does to the ones who sell stuff.
I'm sorry that future comes in pieces and not exactly in order. That the means to make culture free came before the means to make creators not have to pay for the rent. That the draw people have to educate themselves, or to participate in the shared cultural experience is stronger than the arbitrary restrictions some people try to place.
Now I do the same thing with Amazon, and my credit card gets billed a buck. The difference is negligible to me, the difference to the media company? Tons of bad PR and losing a shitload of potential sales because they still thought the album was the only way to distribute music.
Edit: Upon further thought, the "world" in question here gave me two options: Either buying the CD, or downloading the song, and at the time there was no middle ground there. I can still download songs but I don't do it, I buy them. If that is a sense of entitlement it's not a very good one.
I'm much more inclined to support something closer to original copyright. As to Trademark protections, some have gone too far (IOC for example). And patent protection on anything software driven is pretty stupid, as well as extension patents on medication, but I can see a place for patent law, in some places.
But if they sold the content then it would be direct profiting from piracy and that's a pretty simple affair when it comes to the legal side of things as it allows a much more direct assessment of the damages. No longer can the defendant claim that 'those copies would not have been sold to the viewers' because those copies are sold to the viewers, so the other party has you over a barrel when it comes to proving 'lost income due to reduced sales'.
But whether or not they profited directly from the content or not is actually immaterial to whether or not copyright infringement occurred. It did and charging for access would not make a difference there, income from advertising is just as clearly profiting.
I suspect that if they had charged for the content that youtube would never have gotten as big as it did so clearly the fact that they infringed left, right and center on copyrights and did not charge for the access to that content (and still do...) was what made them successful.
So I'd say yes, it was substantially different, but not in a legal sense.
I don't think youtube would have been alive for both legal reasons (they'd have been hit much harder and earlier) and for reasons related to not being able to achieve the scale they did if they had charged for the content.
Also, this isn't just us, the law in fact does consider them substantially different, and specifically uses the word "directly": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10640023
> But I had never seen a business actually profiting from piracy.
The author acknowledges that piracy is "normal", but is drawing the line at directly profiting. YouTube and Napster didn't charge consumers for pirated content.
> I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.
I hate "move fast break things" but this critique doesn't make any sense, hasn't this aphorism always been about breaking your own stuff and how that's okay as long as you're moving fast?
Perhaps a better one would be:
I guess disruption is great until it's your livelihood being disrupted.
Now on udemy people are still paying for it, that means they are ready to pay, and whatever they pay should in that case go to the correct rights holder. There is where the comparison with Napster doesn't hold.
It's like The First and Only Iron Law of the Internet: if you post it, it will be copied and it will be distributed free. I understand that movie studios or record labels may be doing stuff the way they were always doing stuff, but an individual, especially a tech-minded one, expecting to earn money on selling videos in XXI century? Seriously? I mean, you can have any business model you like, but the real world is not obliged to comply.
So that's practical point - you don't get to set up a permanent passive income for yourself just because you publish a series of videos. Some people like to believe that (I've been personally convincing one such person recently to stop thinking along these lines and instead treat educational videos as a loss leader, and use those to sell webinars and/or personal tutoring instead). But I have also a general point to make:
In general, for some reason people imagine that just because they make something and start to sell it, they get to have full control over its life cycle. They don't, they never did. If you make a new widget, it'll get cloned by your competition. If you try to prevent it with $RANDOM_LEGAL_QUIRK, the Chinese will clone it anyway and good luck chasing them down. It's how it was since the dawn of time. And it's good, that's how stuff is supposed to work - this way new things join the shared wealth of humanity.
You're not entitled to capture all value from what you make. You get to only capture some. Expecting more is just plain, textbook greed.
And as a society, we should be nice enough to ensure you're capturing enough value for yourself.
It doesn't have to be most, it just has to be enough.
You'd be surprised at how many people are willing to simply pay for what they consume.
So what if it will be copied, as long as the fraction that is willing to pay is large enough it might be a very profitable venture.
It's a bit like if I work in the Rolex factory and just decide to set up Rolex outlets everywhere with the watches I've stolen from there.
https://torrentfreak.com/artist-cant-get-pirated-music-off-i...
It really sucked for Benn, who openly releases his own music on torrents and is active on What.cd, because he notes in his blog that he threw down 50 grand to hire an orchestra for the album that got stolen (Arboreal).
Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, musicians do not earn the same sympathy as programmers for the same issue, at least not here on Hacker News.
Couldn't have put it better myself: movies are a pretty small part of the economy, despite the spectacle. Box office takings in the US in 2014 were only about $10B in total - that's really not that big an industry, and high tech in particular eats those numbers for breakfast (insubstantial things like Instagram get bought for $1B, for example). Even if you throw in licensing and merchandising, it doesn't move the needle all that much.
Some comparative examples from other industries - the NYC Port Authority budget for 2015 was about $8B in size; Lowe's hardware has about a $50B turnover annually; the University of Pittsburgh had $2B in revenue for 2014; John Deere had $40B in revenue in 2013. All of these are single-company examples from larger industries, but the numbers give some context to the actual economic oomph of Hollywood.
And not only that, but when you see a movie and see all those names scroll by at the end? Those folks aren't all in full-time jobs. It's not like a movie keeps all the employees in permanent full-time employment. Most of the money that movies make don't go to employing people, but to the profiteers at the top.
So, in short, movies don't make that much money in context, and aren't the wide-ranging employers you're painting them as. They do however make a lot of noise and have an unbelievable amount of political power, given their relative lack of economic might. We don't see Lowe's pressuring the government to enact treaties on their behalf...
> I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.
Ah, you're right. SV should enhance its integrity by adopting the moral values of Hollywood...
The author of the article doesn't care about run-of-the-mill torrenting. So I believe the average HN commenter doesn't get "riled up".
Quote from the article: >When I ran Tekpub it would take (typically) a day or two (sometimes just a few hours) for the torrents to hit. It’s a price of doing business.
The problem in this case is that people are willing to pay for the courses but don't know that they are actually pirating them and Udemy is directly profiting from this.
>Movies cost tens of millions to make and employ hundreds if not thousands. Tv shows are maybe an order of magnitude smaller, records maybe one more. Any of those media products blow these aggrieved programmers out of the water, impact wise.
This is just my personal opinion but I'm not interested in either of those. They have no "impact" on me.
>But the founders of YouTube -- who played this little copyright game like a fiddle -- are heroes in the Valley.
They are actually taking action against copyright infringement. You can even claim the ad revenue from your works that the pirates would receive. Udemy does no such thing, even though they have enough employees to check the courses at a reasonable rate by hand and enough money since they take a cut for every sold course.
>I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.
I don't mind getting my stuff "broken", whatever that is even supposed to mean. I want to receive their works for free in the same manner as I want them to receive my works for free. I don't see any inconsitency with that.
They will even brand your videos without your consent by adding Udemy logo watermarks to every video.
If you guys want to hear another horror story about Udemy, take a skim through:
http://blog.nickjanetakis.com/post/133482093993/less-than-24...
(note: the above post is a few days old)
Someone really needs to step up and create a more reasonable course hosting platform.
What will it cost Udemy if instructors start to register copyright and Udemy become liable for statutory damages?
Craigslist was democratizing. "Freebie" mailing lists and swap meets are the "sharing economy". Services like AirBnB are doing everything they possibly can to disconnect people (and keep them disconnected). You aren't even permitted to screen your own clients, they are so concerned you'll cut them out prior to billing. At least when posting a flyer in your community or listing on CL, there is no false pretext about screening or due diligence being performed.
[2]: https://medium.com/dark-mountain/how-platform-coops-can-beat...
I wrote a JavaScript course that I was contracted by someone on Elance to do for very little ( relative to the amount of time I put into it ), he then sold it to another company, that company then put it on Udemy. For a small amount of time it was at the top of the list of beginner JavaScript courses and had over 10,000 students enrolled. I'm grateful my name wasn't on it as it was my first shot at a full on multi hour long course and there were some problems with it...
but.....
Lesson: If you create courses and sell them to people have stipulations regarding resale.
:/
My story wasn't theft so it's not the same, but I figure it might have some utility to someone on hacker news.
You could speculate that 10,000 copies were sold for $10 for $100,000 and then taken down to $50,000 after Udemy's cut.
I'm sure a bunch were likely given away for free to build early momentum on the course which is a common strategy to inflate your student count and get reviews.
I wouldn't be surprised if they raked in at least 20k.
What? No! That shouldn't be the lesson at all! The lesson should be to charge a reasonable amount for your work, and let the purchaser do whatever they want with it.
At least in the U.S., the First-sale doctrine[0] is very important, enabling things like libraries and re-selling things you purchase. That is, you can't make a stipulation like that.
The only solution that comes to mind is for independent content creators to vigorously litigate and ensure that their DMCA claims are taken seriously.
I am against DRM. I don't think it helps anyone to hide content behind buggy technologies, especially when they cause problems that have nothing to do with protection such as security holes. I think you just have to modify the content itself; make it "hard" to cleanse every last mention of the true copyright owner, and stop worrying if some loser actually wants to spend the time and effort it would take to strip all of those mentions out.
https://support.udemy.com/customer/en/portal/articles/150577...
Now it's actually proven they don't give a shit what's happening on their 'platform' and have a frankly absurd response to copyright claims. Given how quickly Youtube will block a video given a content claim, it seems any sort of legal action against Udemy will bring their house of cards down extremely quickly.
It's a much better idea to use your own platform.
"Dear Udemy Company,
I read about your questionable practice of not fighting against pirated content on your platform and not rightfully reimbursing the original creators. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638795 I am not willing to support your stance on this topic and will delete my account within minutes.
Good bye!"
Is there proof of this? Author went from providing examples and evidence, to pure speculation. Kind of lost me there.
[1]: http://artlawjournal.com/grooveshark-protected-dmca-safe-har...
The fault is with the user who uploaded the content and the most effective and realistic option for companies that host user provided content is the DMCA process. No matter how good the filtering process (and I do think Udemy needs to improve vastly here) it's never going to catch everything and this situation is all explained and handled by the DMCA.
The real issue is how they're handling the takedown requests. If they are prompt and accurate with the takedowns and refunding customers then there should be no issue. How they get their own money back from the fraud user is their problem as well. If Udemy is not handling takedowns or refunding customers, then there definitely is a problem and that should be met with actual legal action, not just social/twitter justice.
Edit - why the instant downvotes? haven't seen much other than emotional rants about how Udemy is profiteering but no evidence that the proper DMCA process was followed but denied.
My expectation is that at a minimum, Udemy would investigate the claim once it's reported to them. But you need to provide sufficient proof that you are the content owner. Just because your face is in the video is not enough, but it's a great start.
But you can still learn a lot if you know what to look for, know how to skim, and know which books are good.
Alternatively: maybe I'm just old.
...or old-style internet tutorials formatted as static mostly-HTML webpages.
Or what about printed books. After reading that kind of internet tutorial I got K&R and some less memorable C++ book from the local library.
Quick blog posts, and tutorials aren't too bad.. short specifications are fine too.. but longer content just doesn't work in an electronic interface for me.
Nah, when I was a kid there were no ebooks, we had to rent/buy physical books at the local library/bookstore.
There are plenty of sites like lynda.com, pluralsight.com, udacity.com, coursera.com, edx.org and others that either produce directly or verify the source. Lots of colleges also put their class videos online now, itunes U is great for that.
For video try lynda.com or codeschool.com
Should that stop us from getting a lawyer? Certainly not. Can we still believe in humans usually trying to do good? Yes.
it has been almost a year since I notified them
“It’s not like there’s a database of copyrighted content out there you know”
Ahh so a database of copyright might work. cf https://twitter.com/robconery/status/670389852974657536
Neither is correct. But Udemy isn't just pirating, but profiting.
Second, let's be clear: you can strip DRM without violating copyright. You're violating the Kindle terms of use, but not copyright (that is only the case if you share your stripped books).
Youtube?
Facebook freebooting, too.
Just sain.
You entirely miss the point of the article - it's not about piracy, it's about a marketplace for pirated goods. That's what Udemy does. Sorry if I'm not nice about it.
I suppose if it was explicitly listed as 'Stolen 40" TV!' in the 'Stolen Goods' category of eBay you could say that they should have known, and if Paypal had special 'funds to buy stolen things' accounts and one of those was used to buy it, then you could put some blame to them, etc.
But how far away do you project the blame from the actual criminal? If Udemy is responsible, then do you absolve the person who pirated and uploaded it of guilt? Or do you divide and dilute it? How long does the chain need to be before each participant's share of the guilt is so small as to be negligible and irrelevant?
Why not instead blame the person who uploaded it to make money while knowing that they hadn't created it and didn't own the rights?
However, copyright theft is not actually theft for fairly obvious reasons (a pretty good PR win for the RIAA in getting everyone calling it theft)
There is a watermark on the entire video, and you can quite easily tell the voice changes from the intro to the main body (where I also mention Pluralsight a few times). A very, very simple review process would catch this.
Every video I submit to Pluralsight goes through a 3-step review (Peer, A/V, tech) and they catch any possibility of copyright infringement (though yes, things do get through).
Udemy is not doing anything this way, and have admitted it publicly (see the post, I updated it at the bottom). They flatly say that they rely on their users to tell them if something has a copyright problem.
This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Please read and follow them when posting here:
I'm sorry I don't know how to edit my comment which broke the rules. I'm not sure why it's OK for this poster to claim that Udemy is a thief and it's not OK for me to claim that the poster has made a stupid comment, but if those are the rules, then those are the rules.
I'll restate. Because the poster made that comment, which I've quoted above, I would appreciate it if he would provide links to the many pirated courses that he says Udemy DEPENDS on.
Please don't mark me down for the caps. I'm just quoting him.
If Udemy depends on pirated courses it shouldn't be too much trouble for him to supply a link to a couple of the courses.
Here's the problem. Thousands of us have our courses on Udemy and we rely on our Udemy income to pay our bills. It's not OK for people to sling false accusations around and try to stir up people to boycott Udemy without having some reasonable argument to make. They should have some slim evidence that what they are saying is true. Making false accusations is bad behavior. It may not break the posting rules on this forum, but it is egregious behavior and it ought not be tolerated.
It may not be. We (I'm a moderator here) try to be consistent, but it's impossible for us to see everything, let alone consider it all carefully.
The trouble with your comment was that it went straight to name-calling ("stupid and slanderous"), when it should have provided information. Your final paragraph above, the one that begins "Here's the problem", is much better. It's an informative expression of what lies behind your defense of Udemy and makes a fine contribution to the thread.
HN can be a cryptic place sometimes and I apologize if it felt like we were picking on you personally. That was not my intention. It's entirely fair for you to stand up for Udemy based on your experience. But to be a good HN citizen, please do so informatively and neutrally, even when other commenters say unfair things.
Why is it so bad to hold accountable both the company for hosting the content if they have reason to believe it was stolen and also the person who uploaded it? Criminal statutes punish pawn shops for selling stolen goods, criminal statutes punish people for knowingly purchasing stolen goods. Why can't a company be held responsible for knowingly acting as a marketplace for stolen goods?
It may not even matter if they knowingly acted as a marketplace for stolen goods. See OCILLA (the "safe harbor" provision of the DMCA). Similarly, see the fate of Grooveshark [1].
Providers seeking protection from OCILLA must:
1) not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity,
2) not be aware of the presence of infringing material or know any facts or circumstances that would make infringing material apparent,
3) upon receiving notice from copyright owners or their agents, act expeditiously to remove the purported infringing material.
Udemy is playing a dangerous game. I guess they can feel comforted knowing small independent content producers don't have the legal resources that record labels do. Though together, they may have enough.
[1]: http://artlawjournal.com/grooveshark-protected-dmca-safe-har...
Insinuating shillage or astroturfing isn't allowed on HN without evidence, so please don't do it here. An opposing view does not count as evidence.
I've posted many comments to make it clear to the community what the HN norm is: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=....
If Udemy is turning a blind eye, they are no different from a pawn shop fencing stolen goods.
You would think the person selling the course would have payment information that could be used to track that individual down, the correct course of action is to sue.
If the content isnt worth doing this then the content isnt actually that valuable to the author.
Why's that?
Whatever argument you make should also explain why the web hosting provider isn't also responsible for hosting and distributing pirated content. Certainly they should also look like they're trying to prevent copyright infringement on their network.
> but you should at least look like you're TRYING.
This kind of logic is how an automatic 'review' process gets implemented which just spins for a few minutes and then then accepts the video. The problem of detecting copyrighted content is so complex that without source level access you would never be able to prove definitively that their review process is just theater.
1. A distributor would only use vetted manufacturers, or at least not buy from one again when the products purchased turn out to be stolen
2. When the products are digital, it's much easier to check if they are stolen than physical ones.
3. If it's been determined that a product is stolen, the distributor (generally) isn't held responsible but also isn't allowed to continue selling from the same stock.
Also, I would argue that while it's impossible to detect everything (which is what I said initially too) there should be some legal requirement that the given distributor should show a reasonable attempt to enforce copyright law. The Content ID system, discounting all the ways its abused by a few big companies, is an excellent system for detecting copyright material, and would definitely show that YouTube is at least trying to prevent the spread of material that isn't legal. At the same time, it's clear by this post at least that Udemy is not only NOT vetting their content whatsoever but, similar to Facebook, makes the process to report said content intentionally difficult which I'm sure is not at all related to the fact that as long as said content is live, they're making money.
In short, there's a difference between being a store owner who mistakenly bought stolen products one time, or being a distributor who makes regular business off of stolen product. One shouldn't be held to the fire, one really should.
I think you exaggerate a bit here. How easy is to sue someone from a different country ?
> the correct course of action is to sue
Nope. That's what people do in a dispute to solve the dispute. The correct course of action is something else entirely as we're talking about copyright law, not pissing on your neighbors orchids.
Dangerous was a bad word choice, perhaps "unreasonable".
> Listen mate, if you make money on something and that something is stolen - you are responsible
I never claimed they arent responsible and as the DCMA outlines they mitigate their responsibility for hosting this content by allowing DCMA take downs. What are you suggesting Udemy do to validate that the content creator owns the content they are selling. Copyright law and ownership is a very complicated issue. There isnt a copyright database where they can validate that the content is owned by that person but also the content in the actual content is owned by the person who created the content.
What are you suggesting they do?
> The correct course of action is something else entirely
Like?
> https://twitter.com/robconery/status/664960173455224832
Do you have a licence for this content?
I am not justifying Udemy by the way.
"Let the games begin."
You wanted to sue them yesterday. Ha ha. Fun game. Let's bury Udemy under stolen goods so we can sue Udemy, and screw its employees and the its content providers.
But now you seem to be admitting that you can't sue them. If they haven't broken copyright law, then you can't sue them.
So which is it? Have they stolen your content and shall you sue them? Or is someone else flooding them with pirated content for some nefarious reasons of his own?
Are they breaking copyright law so you can sue them? Or are they breaking no law so you have to settle for pissing in their orchids and stirring up trouble?
Even if the author thought the content was worth nothing doesn't change that it's his content, for which he controls the copyright. I don't necessarily agree with the modern copyright ecosystem, but as long as it's around it should be applied in a manner consistent with its goals of enabling content creators to control the commercialization of their content, including not at all.
What method are you suggesting they deploy to validate the person selling the course owns all the copyrights they need to sell it?
Better content moderation is one step.
Another? Add a part of the EULA that states:
"You hereby claim that you are either the original content creator or have written permission from the original content creator to sell this course. You agree that if you are judged by us to violate another creator's copyright, you will be liable for double any revenues generated by the sale of the course, payable directly to the copyright holder. You will also be permanently banned."
Or something to this effect. Make it part of the EULA that copyright violation won't be tolerated.
So in theory wouldn't udemy be losing money?
+ Total Amount Recvd - Payment fees - Money paid to fraudster - Refunds