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Pirated Courses on Udemy

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Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#81

Post by Falkon1313 »

robconery wrote: post #54
lemevi wrote: post #27

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?

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#82

Post by brbsix »

xan92 wrote: post #44

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.

Wow that is scummy. Can't you do a chargeback?

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#83

Post by sotojuan »

wieckse wrote: post #70

What is a good Udemy alternative?

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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#84

Post by brbsix »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #48
bdcravens wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#85

Post by mapgrep »

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 programmers out of the water, impact wise.

But the founders of YouTube -- who played this little copyright game like a fiddle -- are heroes in the Valley. So are the founders of Napster, one of whom helped get Facebook going.

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

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#86

Post by ps4fanboy »

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…

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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#87

Post by ps4fanboy »

brbsix wrote: post #84
ps4fanboy wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#88

Post by kkt262 »

Besides piracy, udemy itself is just a terrible platform. Unless you agree to sell your course for $10, you'll pretty much never get promoted there organically. They want YOU to do all the work of promoting it to your list, etc. What's worse is that they close off their system as well, making it impossible for you to collect email addresses or send marketing messages.

It's a much better idea to use your own platform.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#89

Post by brbsix »

ps4fanboy wrote: post #48
bdcravens wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Re: Pirated Courses on Udemy

#90

Post by wyclif »

sotojuan wrote: post #83
wieckse wrote: post #70

What is a good Udemy alternative?

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.

Alternatively: maybe I'm just old.

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