[robconery]

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.

[JohnV2333]

Yeah, it makes sense that users have to tell them theres a copyright problem, just like a copy-righted YouTube video.

[developer1]

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.

[sapokedak]

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?

[dang]

> That's just a stupid, slanderous comment.

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

[sapokedak]

>>>>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.

[dang]

> 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.