[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.

[forrestthewoods]

I didn't say Udemy was responsible for flagging content. But I am saying there's no fucking way there are only 125 copyright infringing cases. It's a shit ton more. It may not be their responsibility to find them. But to imply that's the extent of the problem is wrong and a lie.

"nor can anyone other than the copyright holder reasonably be expected to"

I don't think this is a fundamentally true statement. For example I believe that Facebook has a moral obligation to provide tools to stop freebooting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6A1Lt0kvMA

[Natsu]

Again, copyright is all about permission. Copying is just fine if someone has permission.

And who is the only person who has any idea who has given whom permission to do what? Well, that would be the only person who can give that permission: the copyright holder and their agents.

Note that this is even the case for identical items. Just because one person wasn't authorized to post a video to Facebook doesn't mean that someone else was not.

I do not have an account on Facebook, so I have no idea what video sharing there is like. Maybe it would make sense for them to do something, but the law at present does not obligate them to do any such thing. Quite the contrary: they're not responsible for their users, other than to respond to DMCA complaints.

If you're surprised by a mere hundred or so notices on a site of that size, I shudder to think what you'd say if you knew the true scope of the notices received by, say, Google search. They get 10 times as many per minute.

https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright...

~66M URLs removed this month / 30 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes

[forrestthewoods]

This is in an incredibly frustrating conversation. You keep responding to statements I didn't make.

I know how copyright law works. I know how the DMCA works. I know what legal obligations all involved parties do and do not have. I am not an ignorant child. For us to have an adult conversation you'll have to give me some benefit of the doubt.

Now. To say it again. I did not claim that Udemy had a legal obligation to flag or identify copyright infringing content. What I did say is that their 125 DMCA figure is meaningless bullshit. It's bullshitness is orthogonal to their responsibility (or lack thereof).

Moving on. I, again, did not say that Facebook had a legal obligation. I said that, in my opinion, they had a moral obligation. Freebooting is a major problem. I provided a video you can watch to learn more about it.

Next. I never said anything that implied I was surprised over a mere hundred notices. I have no idea how you inferred surprise. I said that number is significantly lower than the actual number of copyright infringing videos on their site. Which is a statement to be taken at face value. The number of notices other companies, such as Google, receive is not relevant.

[Natsu]

I'm not sure of another way to point out that your belief in some nebulous moral responsibility was not given any foundation other than your own opinion. Even if something like Freebooting is a problem, it is not logical to impose obligations, whether moral or legal, on people who lack the information required to accurately judge the situation. This is why I keep pointing out that only the copyright holder and those they inform (say, via DMCA notices) has any actual knowledge of what is and is not infringement.

I cannot take that statement about the "actual number" of infringing videos being much higher at face value. It requires making too many assumptions without evidence, not the least of which is that none of the notices they have received is bogus. It does not appear to be based on evidence, as the actual notices mentioned are not on Lumen for public review. Given that your profile claims that you work for Uber Entertainment and not someone close to this story, I have to ask how you can claim that as fact when it does not appear that the general public has access to the information required to claim that as fact, given that said facts do not appear to be publicly available.

Interestingly, in attempting to find a way to review the notices more objectively, I found what appears to be your company. From the notice text, it would appear that you're using the DMCA to assert trademark claims and possibly EULA violations without making any clear case for infringement in the notice, whether or not you actually had any such claims: https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/616095#

So it might be interesting to discuss the implications of Crossfit, Inc. v. Alvies with your attorney sometime: http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=13f9814f-b56e-...

Of course, I realize that I can't be sure that's actually your company as there might be some other Uber Entertainment out there other than the one listed in your profile. If that were that the case, though, you'd have trademark issues that need sorting out.

But if that notice does belong to your company, they don't seem to know as much about the DMCA as you do. There's no registered DMCA agent, for example - http://copyright.gov/onlinesp/list/u_agents.html - and you do have forums where users can submit content. Compare that with YC: https://news.ycombinator.com/dmca.html

[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?

[Falkon1313]

>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?

If Youtube still gets 45% of the ad revenue from content, then I suppose maybe that would mean Udemy should be 5% more responsible toward the original content creators than Youtube?

But it's actually much messier. If a song disappears from your Youtube playlist, well, you didn't pay anything for it or really invest anything into it, so it's just a minor annoyance.

But on a site like this, if you have paid to take an online course and have invested many hours in it when it suddenly disappears, that's a much bigger annoyance. You have a loss. So they have a responsibility toward the 'students' (customers) as well. But that's not all. There are also the instructor accounts of people who may (potentially) make a living off of the courses they sell there. If the site is too careless and quick about shutting down any course anytime anyone asks them to, then it could be spammed with bogus reports that would harm those people.

So they do need a solid process, with the legal paperwork, for infringement notification and counter notification. Which they appear to have in the form of DMCA. It's not optimal, but it's what we have now as a society in order to have a standard that doesn't go too far in either direction without actual legal action.

[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.

[blazespin]

They seem to think the DMCA / Safe Harbor legislation applies to them. I thought the conclusion was since they are selling these courses the Safe Harbor doesn't apply.

[rodgerd]

> Most people never know their content has been stolen.

Yes. There are niche companies who turn a buck finding misuse of photographs, for example (which, let us note, is usually well-off institutions ripping off working or hobbyist photographers).