Yes, I did. As did Troy. No reponse (now as then).
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.
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.