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Pirated Courses on Udemy

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Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#111

Post by alex_hirner »

brbsix wrote: post #77
soyiuz wrote: post #38

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 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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#113

Post by tbcj »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #81
robconery wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

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?

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#114

Post by nickjj »

brbsix wrote: post #80
wturner wrote: post #47

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…

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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#115

Post by Spooky23 »

Falkon1313 wrote: post #81
robconery wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#116

Post by jacquesm »

mapgrep wrote: post #85

Lol you people are really amazing. No sense of irony? Really? Hey guess what, Silicon Valley has been doing this for nearly 20 years to other people. Funny how the HN crowd gets riled up when it happens to programmers. Movies cost tens of millions to make and employ hundreds if not thousands. Tv shows are maybe an order of magnitude smaller, records maybe one more. Any of those media products blow these aggrieved pro…

I did not notice Napster, Youtube or their users selling the content.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#117

Post by [deleted] »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #96

Using DCMA is a good first step when trying to deal with these issues, posting an angry blog and defaming a company as being made explicitly to sell stolen content on twitter shouldn't be your first action. https://support.udemy.com/customer/en/portal/articles/150577...

[deleted]

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#118

Post by laughinghan »

mapgrep wrote: post #85

Lol you people are really amazing. No sense of irony? Really? Hey guess what, Silicon Valley has been doing this for nearly 20 years to other people. Funny how the HN crowd gets riled up when it happens to programmers. Movies cost tens of millions to make and employ hundreds if not thousands. Tv shows are maybe an order of magnitude smaller, records maybe one more. Any of those media products blow these aggrieved pro…

> It’s a price of doing business.

> But I had never seen a business actually profiting from piracy.

The author acknowledges that piracy is "normal", but is drawing the line at directly profiting. YouTube and Napster didn't charge consumers for pirated content.

> I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.

I hate "move fast break things" but this critique doesn't make any sense, hasn't this aphorism always been about breaking your own stuff and how that's okay as long as you're moving fast?

Perhaps a better one would be:

I guess disruption is great until it's your livelihood being disrupted.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#120

Post by blazespin »

Coding_Cat wrote: post #50
braum wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

File for copyright? how do you mean: Copyright is implicit, unlike patents, upon creation of a work.

Register it, makes the court case that much more easily winnable.
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