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Comment by wturner | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to derail this with a personal story but this might be useful.

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.

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If it shot to the top its very possible they were spending money on marketing & promotion through the affiliate program -- not just uploading it and cashing in. If that was the case, who knows, may be you made more money than they did.

> Lesson: If you create courses and sell them to people have stipulations regarding resale.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine

Ok. Then I was wrong.

First-sale isn't relevant to this scenario. First-sale applies only to a specific copy. This is either a transfer of ownership or licensing agreement issue.

How much would you have made (posting it on Udemy) after all was said and done? Pretty impressive to see such numbers on your first attempt. You must have been doing something right (or perhaps the company did a hell of a job promoting it).

Udemy sells courses for about $10 year round and people who obtain the course for free also count as students. Udemy takes 50% as well.

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.

Sounds like you should create another and send it straight to Udemy or one of their competitors.

I don't think you can do paid work and stipulate whether the they can later sell it to anyone. If you can learn something from this, it should be that next time you might be able to cut out the middle man.

You can contract just about any terms you like, including retention of copyright and limitations on the license granted. Don't just accept whatever terms someone predatory offers to you. (software consultant, not a lawyer)

Accepting a contract on elance doesn't let you set these kind of terms. It's pure work for hire, or you wouldn't get the job.

You could try, but I was arguing you won't have much luck with that. Not many people will hire you if there are specific strings attached to what you produce.

You agreed to do it for the price you were paid. What are you upset about? Did not not charge enough money? There's only one person to blame for that...

I never said I was upset. Read the post.

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