
Anger at 'stolen' online courses on Udemy - saltyoutburst
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34952382
======
femto113
I'd suggest an escrow system but their coupon system seems to make this
problem nearly unfixable:

    
    
      It said no money had changed hands from the sale of
      Mr Hunt's course "as the fraudulent instructor had
      created coupon codes to allow students free access
      to the course".
    

I'm guessing those coupon codes were sold on some other platform (or perhaps
used as bait to get traffic that was monetized in some other way) allowing the
fraudster to profit directly without money ever flowing through Udemy's hands.

~~~
joshschreuder
I think the Udemy coupons are generally used as a way to boost the ratings.
Give out coupons and tell people to rate your course 5 stars, then people see
the well-rated course and buy it for real.

Given the number of terribly produced courses I've seen on there with
excellent ratings, it wouldn't surprise me.

------
forrestthewoods
"The good news is, the good actors in the Udemy system are much greater than
the bad. On average, over 15,000 courses are uploaded to Udemy per year. So
far in 2015, we have received 125 DMCA notifications"

The fact that only 125 DMCA notification have been filed doesn't mean the
number of copyright infringing videos is low. Most people never know their
content has been stolen.

~~~
Natsu
Given the large number of bogus DMCA requests that fly around, it doesn't seem
that large to me. Nobody is required to act as the copyright police, nor can
anyone other than the copyright holder reasonably be expected to.

Copyright relies on permission and the copyright holder is, in fact, the only
entity which can determine who has and does not have their permission for a
given work. And sometimes even they get it wrong. For example, in Viacom v.
YouTube they listed videos Viacom itself had uploaded as "infringing" and were
forced to withdraw those from their complaint. And they did that _twice_
because even after hundreds of hours spent on lawyers and legal research, they
still couldn't get it right.

~~~
such_a_casual
Do you think it matters if Udemy is getting 50% of the revenue from the sale
of pirated material? Do you think that changes their responsibility in
comparison to a company like Youtube?

~~~
Natsu
Not in the slightest, because they have no way of reading copyright holder's
minds to know who has given whom permission to use what.

~~~
such_a_casual
They require a signature from the owner of the copyright when submitting a
copyright complaint. Do you think they should require a signature from the
owner of the copyright when submitting content?

~~~
Natsu
They have no way of even knowing who the copyright holder _is_ barring
copyright registration which is optional and uncommon, let alone who actually
has permission from that person. There are already copyright penalties if
someone wrongly claims to have permission. That's why it works the other way:
because trying to do things backwards imposes impossible demands on people
trying to follow the law.

EDIT: By way of example, there's substantial controversy over who owns a
copyright as famous as _Happy Birthday_.

------
segphault
I can sympathize with companies that face the very difficult challenge of
policing user-submitted content, but Udemy has always seemed really sketchy to
me.

Earlier this year, I got inundated with Twitter spam from bots that were
written to abuse Udemy's affiliate linking program. I made several attempts to
bring the issue to Udemy's attention, but the company was totally ambivalent
and didn't really care. I eventually configured my Twitter client to
completely filter out any message that contains "Udemy" so that I wouldn't
have to see a dozen or so obnoxious mentions directed at me every time I post
a tweet with a programming-related keyword.

It doesn't surprise me much that their approach to addressing piracy is
similarly lackadaisical. I doubt that they would have done anything at all
beyond the bare minimum required by the DMCA if the issue hadn't escalated and
produced widespread criticism.

~~~
spb
I just get spam directly from Udemy in my inbox, saying things like "Last
chance to get these courses, prices so low it's a STEAL!".

------
jacquesm
Udemy's blog post linked from tfa:

[https://blog.udemy.com/maintaining-the-integrity-of-our-
udem...](https://blog.udemy.com/maintaining-the-integrity-of-our-udemy-
community/)

~~~
sirtastic
That's great they took down the content but they failed to mention
compensating the content creators who in all likelihood generate income from
the videos that have now been viewed (free or not) by Udemy users. Way to
maintain integrity.

~~~
dragonwriter
The whole purpose of the DMCA safe harbor is that if the DMCA process is
complied with, there is no liability of the host to the content owner; the
user submitting the content may still be liable, but that requires the
copyright owner to take legal action against that user.

~~~
cortesoft
In order to qualify for DMCA safe harbor, the site has to 'have no direct
financial benefit' from the content
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act#Safe_harbor_provision_for_online_storage_-_.C2.A7_512.28c.29))

In the Napster case, the fact that the infringing content drew in more users
was enough to prove it was financially benefiting from the content. Even if
Udemy refunds all the class fees for the infringing classes, they would still
get the benefit of bringing in new users to their platform because of the
infringing content.

In other words, it might be hard for them to claim safe harbor.

------
pbreit
Why is "stolen" in quotes? Is it because that is being questioned? Or just the
it's sort of a direct quote?

~~~
x3n0ph3n3
Because copyright infringement is not the same as theft and they are quoting
the accusers.

------
kumarski
Somehow, I imagine that Udemy is going to get a ton of emails from original
content creators in the next few days.

I can already picture someone scraping, crawling, and contacting the owners of
the original content.

~~~
brbsix
If it was that easy to tell whether a course was pirated (yet alone determine
the original owner), this whole mess probably wouldn't have happened. Udemy is
in the best position to identify infringement since they have complete access
to the courses, but it's anyone's guess whether they would go to such lengths.
I would guess the best bet would take a few screens at random durations then
perform an image search against a database of screens collected from courses
on other marketplaces. Then use Mechanical Turk for final verification. I
suppose you could perform facial recognition against profile photos of authors
on other marketplaces as well (for the courses that actually include a
headshot). I've used OpenBR to do similar things in the past but accuracy was
too low to be useful in my case.

------
blazespin
So does this mean that they believe that Udemy has safe harbor? I thought the
consensus was that they do not. IANAL, but I don't think DMCA was meant for
people directly selling IP for money and taking a cut and more for just
content hosting providers.

~~~
cortesoft
It probably doesn't, since it has a "direct financial benefit" from the
content
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act#Safe_harbor_provision_for_online_storage_-_.C2.A7_512.28c.29))

However, if it refunds all the money from the infringing class and removes the
video promptly, maybe it can successfully argue that it is not gaining
financially from the infringing content?

------
macinjosh
Why is the word stolen in quotes? Clearly they were stolen, no need to tiptoe
around the subject.

------
vezzy-fnord
How can you steal something that is neither rivalrous nor excludable?

~~~
function_seven
The same way the creator can own it.

"Steal" has more than one definition. In the context of copyrighted works, it
means to distribute without permission, or to make an unauthorized copy of
that work.

~~~
Absentinsomniac
To be fair, though, given the non-excludable nature of digital goods, it
doesn't make a whole lot of sense to make it "stealing" in the first place.
Pretty much by definition you can't really prevent access to it. Maybe it
makes sense in the context of companies having a hand in the "theft" because
they can more readily be made to comply.

~~~
function_seven
When Bobby is accused of stealing Sally's idea for the Halloween costume
contest, no one wrings their hands about the non-excludablility of an "idea".
Nobody tells Sally, "Bobby didn't steal it, he committed idea-infringement,
Sally."

In layman's terms, "steal" is perfectly acceptable. Everyone understands what
it means in this context.

