Comment by Falkon1313 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Falkon1313 | Hacker News Reader

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So if a burglar steals a TV, sells it to someone else, and they list it on eBay, does that make eBay guilty of the burglary? If someone buys it using Paypal, do you consider Paypal to be the burglar? If the currency mode used was USD, do you consider the U.S. government to be the guilty burglar?

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?

It's a little different than the simple theft of a TV, although yes you raise a decent point. As I've been saying to people: just a reasonable effort is all I ask.

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.

Yeah, it makes sense that users have to tell them theres a copyright problem, just like a copy-righted YouTube video.

No, it doesn't. Udemy would fall apart as a company without illegal content. Their entire business DEPENDS on pirated content. You really think they would be making any money with the very very few legitimate courses? The business knows the majority of courses are pirated, and they don't care. This is how they make their money.

That's just a stupid, slanderous comment. Do you have any reason to say such a thing? Can you please give us links to some of the many pirated courses?

> That's just a stupid, slanderous comment.

This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Please read and follow them when posting here:

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>>>>Their entire business DEPENDS on pirated content. You really think they would be making any money with the very very few legitimate courses? The business knows the majority of courses are pirated, and they don't care. This is how they make their money.<<<<<

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.

> I'm not sure why it's OK for this poster to claim

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.

Because udemy has money and are easier to go after, if rob was to go after the person who actually stole his content they might be insolvent or in a country is too expensive to go after them.

In the UK its an offence to handle goods which you believe to be stolen. What constitutes "belief" is left up to the court, but if ebay's primary function was to push stolen things then yes - they would be held accountable under this offence (handling stolen goods).

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)

Stolen property is always tainted. There was an example in the news last year illustrating this -- a 1960s classic car stolen was returned to its owner after 50 years and multiple resales.

If Udemy is turning a blind eye, they are no different from a pawn shop fencing stolen goods.

Between the use of burglary and the disregard of physical vs. intangible property, this is just a preposterous set of hypotheticals.

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?

Why do you think they knowingly acted as a marketplace for stolen goods? Where do you get that idea?

Are you a shill for Udemy?

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...

> Are you a shill for Udemy?

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=....

No I'm not a shill for Udemy. What about you? Can you please tell me why you said that Udemy knowingly acted as a marketplace for stolen goods?

I've never said Udemy knowingly acted as a marketplace for stolen goods. Also I apologize for questioning your intentions, I realize you are likely just an instructor who has experience with their platform.

Sorry. I didn't know how to open the thread when I replied so I didn't realize that you weren't the person I was originally speaking to. So to you I say, "You don't need to talk to me since I wasn't talking to you. But no, I'm no shill. I am a small, independent content provider and I find it disturbing that people make wild accusations and others believe what they read on Twitter with no need for any kind of proof."

Apology accepted. Thanks.

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