Filling out Udemy's "Report Abuse" form to report a "Copyright or Trademark Violation" probably doesn't create any legal obligation on their part to take any action. The author (copyright holder) should have filed an official DMCA takedown request, directed at Udemy's designated DMCA contact, whose e-mail and postal addresses can be found here:
That's what you'd do if Udemy had no registered DMCA agent. Basically, if you wish to issue a DMCA takedown notice you need to follow the DMCA process.
Udemy must "not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity" in order for DCMA to be applicable. Since they're charging for the courses it's probably ordinary copyright infringement on their part. You should send them a Cease and Desist and then sue them.
While I sympathize with the author its (edit)unreasonable to suggest that they should be validating each course. However it appears more should be done to ease the path to getting your content taken down.
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.
Because how would you even do that with any sort of accuracy, do you check the global content registry database? Surely people dont expect to export the burden of protecting your IP to other companies?
If you're in the business of selling content you damn well ought to know who's content your selling. I'm not saying any system would be completely bulletproof, but you should at least look like you're TRYING.
So if I lease commercial land it's my responsibility to make sure my renter isn't laundering money?
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.
Your metaphor isn't quite right, a better one would be "should a distributor of a given product be held responsible for determining if the goods they're given are stolen?" To that I would say:
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.
Define "dangerous". Listen mate, if you make money on something and that something is stolen - you are responsible. Udemy created this marketplace for stolen things; people steal things and sell them there.
> 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
Doesn't the same thing happen with YouTube? Despite ContentID and all that, there is still a lot of piracy. Do you blame YouTube? They can only do so much.
If you look around, the main complaint with YouTube now is people making false claims of ownership now, this is the problem with validating the idea of "ownership" there is no registry its almost impossible to validate that someone doesnt own the content that you dont know about.
Exactly. "Ownership" is not easily defined when it comes to content. For all we know, just because Rob appears in the video does not mean he owns the rights to the content. And just because the guy who uploaded the content is not in the video doesn't mean he might not have connections with people who own the content. Just saying.
And this is all because ownership beyond "I made it I own it" is hidden in contracts which arent required to be public. People who expect third parties to have knowledge of private contracts are making unreasonable claims.
Are you the owner of the copyright of the course that was stolen? If you are and if you've filed to have the course taken down and Udemy has refused, then you have a dispute and you need to sue them. You knew that breaking copyright law was something that would be settled in court yesterday when you said, "I sincerely hope Udemy is flooded with pirated content. Lawsuit fodder.
"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?
>If the content isnt worth doing this then the content isnt actually that valuable to the author.
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.
I agree, and the owner should assert his claim by submitting a DCMA takedown request, but the owner shouldnt complain that they had to do that in the first place, that is unreasonable.
It's unreasonable? How? This isn't YouTube, they're selling video courses. As a customer, you would damn better expect that they have curated the content on their site.
"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.
Sorry miss-read I guess it depends on if they continue to sell it after being notified in a manner that cant be abused, what else can we expect them to do?
It's happening often enough that they could at least do a cursory search at the most common places. They're not a charity; they are profiting off of this, and it's reasonable to assume they could use some of that profit on due diligence.
I do not see any evidence to suggest they are profiting from it, wouldn't they be legally obligated to refund the users who bought the content once its taken down, since they would lose access?
So in theory wouldn't udemy be losing money?
+ Total Amount Recvd
- Payment fees
- Money paid to fraudster
- Refunds
Of course they are profiting these (pirate) courses. Content creators with infringed content have already charted these waters. One creator had $7k+ of his (stolen) content sold. There were no refunds and Udemy refused to reimburse the creator.
Can you link to this information, I am not saying your wrong but if true this is relevant to the discussion, because if they kept the money then that is the real thing we should be talking about, as this is highly questionable behavior.
The info is scattered all over the place... Here is one of the posts https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/651215238470090754. People were complaining Udemy didn't even refund users who purchased videos that were posted for free elsewhere.
> but udemy got videos off of pluralsight, uploaded them to their own servers, and are then selling them off as udemy's own courses.
You are confusing things here. A Udemy user took some content from Pluralsight and published the content on Udemy. Where Udemy is in the wrong is in not taking the content down and banning the teacher from their platform.
I certainly don't know enough about the site to say definitively one way or another, but I wouldn't be surprised. This sort of scenario reminds me of Airbnb taking customers from Craigslist [1] or Uber employing "ghosts" to fuck with competitors (cancel rides and poach drivers) [2]. Of course there's no evidence of Udemy doing anything this shady, it just wouldn't be outside the realm of what some tech companies have been up to lately.
Maybe an approach could be to actually reach out to authors that are creating accounts and to verify identities more than just an email account rather than focus on contents of that said account. I would also imagine that certain geographic regions have higher reports of said activities. So extra checks should be added for them in the approval process. In the end if they don't shape up they are only hurting themsleves in the long run.
The sad thing is that in this day and age, independent content creators don't have their copyrights respected, while megacorporations patent troll and abuse our broken intellectual property system.
The only solution that comes to mind is for independent content creators to vigorously litigate and ensure that their DMCA claims are taken seriously.
Did he even try to contact Udemy support and get a response? It would seem like the thing to do before writing a hit piece. I interviewed at Udemy, but ended up taking a position somewhere else, yet they struck me as good people trying to make a good product. I don't like piracy and the author has been wronged, but this blog post is unfair.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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?
>>>>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.
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?
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.
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."
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.
This happens fairly frequently to Jeffrey Way of Laracasts and there's a lot of money involved in stealing his material:
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.
I couldnt tell from the tweets but did Udemy keep the money or did they refund the users once the content was taken down? If refunds are issued to users, it seems unreasonable for the author to claim that Udemy should be paying them 100% of any money transacted. Is Rob and Jeffrey suggesting that Udemy should pay $2 for every $1 involved in fraud?
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?
Downvotes are probably because hardcore copyright-abusing tactics employed by the entertainment industry to save their outdated business models are not particularly popular 'round here. The fact that they exist does not mean one should use them.
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.
The company isn't stealing the videos, other users are. As long as they take it down promptly and then refund customers, what are they doing wrong? Where's the outrage at youtube then which allows for the same thing? Or paypal or stripe or any ecommerce product which allows for selling something?
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.
while I agree that the author of this piece needs to make sure they're submitting DMCA takedowns to the appropriate place, I still think that a company trying to bill themselves as an academic institution shouldn't be allowed ANY infringement.
They're only claiming academic insofar as they facilitate learning through the videos. Not sure this qualifies as real academia - they are not an accredited school or university nor do they have teachers on staff or any other normal infrastructure. It's just a site that hosts videos for sale.
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 they're charging $$ to watch the videos, they can pay someone to review content... in this case, Udemy could very well be liable for penalties beyond DMCA safe harbor.
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?
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?
Well, it is how the DMCA works. If the videos are uploaded by someone else (not by Udemy), then all they have to do is remove the video promptly if sent a DMCA request. If they did that, they would not be liable for damages.
IANAL, but DMCA applies to penalties, not to the issue of whether or not they're infringing copyright.
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:
There is three actors in this, yours only has two, this is like is like the RIAA asking a record store to pay them the $10,000 they made from selling a record which turned out to not belong to the supplier, the store issued a recall refunded the customers but the RIAA still wants the $10K
I once asked a muslim man to not cut off a little boy's hand for stealing an apple, and he told me, and i quote "that's not the way sharia works. If you think it is, please, let the caliph know you disagree with the words of Allah and let's see which part of your body they chop off."
You can go after Udemy. They're not just a hosting service. They claim ownership of the content. "Each of our 35,000+ courses is taught by an expert instructor". Many courses are paid. If Udemy charges for access to the course, they lose the DMCA safe harbor. Then they're liable for full copyright damages.
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.
Make sure you file copyright for each video before making it available on your own website. Having a copyright in place before any theft allows you to go after (by threat or course) statutory damages for each theft of your work. I learned this a few years ago from our own IP lawyer when someone was reusing some of our material. We now file the $35(or whatever it is) fee before posting the material online.
You can file a registration for copyright, which gives you certain presumptions and advantages in court (e.g. it serves as a presumption of ownership, which would be important in these kinds of cases). It also might serve as "notice" for potential infringers so that you can get higher damages.
Yes but statutory damages will not be available and according to our lawyer. The statutory damages is what gets people to comply because it is the one that can multiply exponentially as it applies to EACH violation (download, sale, ect...). If you use the implicit copyright you can only go after actual damages which will be harder to prove. I'm not suggesting you file a copyright for everything, just stuff you want to absolutely protect. In the context of this discussion it is education videos.
You have one month after discovering the infringement to register if you want to get statutory damages.[1]
Register a copyright online here: http://copyright.gov/eco/
Yes, they take video uploads. Costs $35 per item.
The OSI surely has some say in what they meant when they created the term "open source". The term didn't exist before 1998 when the people involved† with the organization you're referring to coined it. Anything else is just perverting a well-defined term.
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.
You don't even need to put a (c) or mark it with "copyright 2015". You can do that to express that you are the copyright holder but you don't need to do it. Your work, assuming it falls within copyrights, is automatically given a copyright.
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.
Note too that this is for USA law. USA was one of the last countries to ratify the Berne Convention, nearly 100 years after it was formed. It is Berne that brought in automatic copyright without registration.I still occasionally come across people in the UK who think they must register for copyright because of registration still being a thing in USA.
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.
17 U.S. Code § 512 - Limitations on liability relating to material online
(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's the killer. This service not only charges, they charge on a per-course basis.
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.
Isn't YT "[receiving] a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity [video views]"? Just wondering how they actually get around that?
I don't believe so because you are paying for an ad free experience. You are not paying for a particular video. They are not making money from the infringing activity (the copyrighted video).
YT (or at least, YT's lawyers) would say no. A financial benefit _directly_ attributable to the infringing activity would be charging for (access to) the content itself, that is to say, unless you pay you don't get to view the content in the first place.
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.
I wouldn't be scared to contact a lawyer. The professionals I've contacted (tax people, finance managers, lawyers) have always been upfront if it's not worth their time and about how much things might cost. They'll also usually give you free advice.
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.
I feel like the OP highlights a problem common to the new breed of "marketplace" platforms like Uber, Airbnb, and Udemy. All of these substitute open, public, regulated markets (taxis, hotels, universities) with closed, private, unregulated markets. Once a near-monopoly is reached, the rules of the marketplace can be changed to benefit the marketplace owner (instead of the service provider).
^This. I cringe every time I hear someone say X is democratizing Y or that X is the "sharing economy". These are unregulated (near) monopoly markets.
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.
So if platforms like udemy, app store, uber, etc. eventually gained monopolistic position (which makes business sense) and then adversely taking advantage from it in the long run, what is an alternative model? Transferring them to a blockain'esque infrastructure of public good? I'm seriously interested in a techno-organizational evolution of the platform model.
I don't know. I've put a lot of thought into it, but this is a Herculean task (like David versus Goliath). Hopefully there are better minds out there who can come up with something. Blockchains and distributed platforms like Etherium look really promising. So does OpenBazaar [1]. There was also an article on the topic recently posted to HN [2]. It has a great quote, "Uber’s big bet is global monopoly or bust.".
HAHA! I got myself into a wrong course and Udemy haven't refunded me till now. They say you can try it before you buy, But they don't give the money back once they have it. Nobody even answers your queries seemed very shady. Not surprised to see this now.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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...
> 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.
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.
After reading the blog post and the comments here, I'm wondering what are the affected parties waiting for? they should organise a class action lawsuit and sue Udemy's ass...
I wonder how many people who wrote courses that are now being pirated on Udemy ever torrented music or movies illegally, used someone else's Netflix account, DRM stripped Kindle books etc. I don't agree with Udemy, but it's always crappier when it happens to you.
Let's play devil's advocate and say that you are right. All of these people have at some time downloaded a movie or used someone else's Netflix account. Your argument still wouldn't be valid. Udemy is making presumably 10s of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars off of stolen content. This is the difference between shoplifting a dvd and opening up blockbusters all across the world with movies you stole. The difference is night and day. Not just logically or morally, but legally.
First, these are equivalent cases. If someone torrented music or movies, and then sold them, it would be.
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).
Anything realy. Udemy has a terrible signal to noise ratio, and they do scummy stuff like what's going on here. Read a respected book, try Udacity or Coursera, or ask the community what course is good.
I don't know why kids these days are so down on programming ebooks. I have a ton of them in a Dropbox folder, and they're my main source of learning new programming languages. Sure, they date fast, can't be updated fast, and aren't interactive. They're old school now that we're in the era of MOOCs.
But you can still learn a lot if you know what to look for, know how to skim, and know which books are good.
I agree about ebooks, but I'd argue that they have a whole virtue of their own: Nothing beats the speed at what you can skim them, to quickly narrow down on the parts you're interested in, thus being exponentially more efficient than watching hours of video just to find out that it wasn't what you needed (yea, well, except physical books of course, which even ebooks can't beat.)
I'm 21. I've been teaching myself programming for about three years (outside of school). With a few notable exceptions, good old books have been the best learning materials.
I find that physical books work way better for me.. I have a mostly photographic memory and the feel of book, and position of the content adds additional context I just don't have reading an e-format for too much at once. It all tends to just blur together pretty quickly.
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.
I think the lesson here is making sure the content is produced by a legitimate, authentic and expert source rather than just anyone who can upload something - especially when paying money for it.
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.
I would guess that Udemy realizes that they cannot compete with these other sites on quality (and the other attributes you mentioned). Thus they are attempting the Pawn Shop or Dollar Store approach wherein they will (re)sell (potentially questionable) material at the lowest prices.
253 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 242 ms ] threadhttps://www.udemy.com/terms/copyright/
What will it cost Udemy if instructors start to register copyright and Udemy become liable for statutory damages?
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.
Since then a number of people have posted a few alternatives:
- https://teachable.com/
- https://www.pluralsight.com/
- http://02geek.com
- https://cloudacademy.com/ (for more specific types of courses)
I'm definitely moving off Udemy. I plan to research the alternatives over the weekend and start moving my course when I make a decision.
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
You are confusing things here. A Udemy user took some content from Pluralsight and published the content on Udemy. Where Udemy is in the wrong is in not taking the content down and banning the teacher from their platform.
[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-harvested-craigslist-t... [2:]
https://www.udemy.com/copyright-law-for-online-entrepreneurs...
The only solution that comes to mind is for independent content creators to vigorously litigate and ensure that their DMCA claims are taken seriously.
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:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
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.
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/649933605305774081
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/649936961105432576
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/649937073407979520
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/651215238470090754
https://twitter.com/jeffrey_way/status/651215565713870849
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]
[1]https://www.udemy.com/terms/copyright/
I once asked a muslim man to not cut off a little boy's hand for stealing an apple, and he told me, and i quote "that's not the way sharia works. If you think it is, please, let the caliph know you disagree with the words of Allah and let's see which part of your body they chop off."
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...
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/412
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.
https://opensource.org/osd
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.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/512
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.
Is there proof of this? Author went from providing examples and evidence, to pure speculation. Kind of lost me there.
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.
[1]: https://openbazaar.org/
[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.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
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).
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