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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

It's not about the money (youtube/google has plenty of money and still doesnt catch everything) but about the logistics of it all. Why does facilitating transactions give them more liability? You can use paypal or stripe links to take money, are they now liable for penalties for things people sell using them?

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Just as an FYI since you keep bringing it up, I'm fairly sure that payment processors are absolutely liable for illegal items purchased through their gateways.

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).

Think of IP in the same class as a firearm in the United States and suddenly your context falls apart. If a person was to be a digital broker for the sale of firearms, then would they be liable for brokering a stolen firearm? Why should a person's quantifiable, provable IP be treated as some kind of exception? Taking money as a brokerage entails certain levels of fiduciary and ethical parameters in nearly all industries. Craigslist seems to me to have a different mentality - in that not acting as an actual 'compensated via transaction' middle man conveys some safe harbors - which Udemy can't reasonably employ as a defense.

It's not an exception - this is already handled by the DMCA. It's a well known and understood situation.

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?

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