[mirkonasato]

YouTube has the same issue: people upload copyright-infringing material there all the time. Do you refuse to use YouTube as well?

In fact pretty much any platform that allows users to upload content has that sort of issues. The most common approach is to rely on other users to report violations and then take content down.

Why do some people feel they have to "boycott" some sites but not others? Genuine question, I'm interested to understand the reasons.

(Disclaimer: I published a few courses, including on Udemy. And I filed my fair share of takedown notices when unauthorized copies showed up on various sites, including YouTube.)

[Sagiri]

The difference is that a big part of YT's appeal is how open it is. Anyone can post pretty much anything.

With something like Udemy, where you have to pay for courses, Udemy needs to review every course before selling them. You need to check them for accuracy (which would mean having them reviewed by experts in the field), as well as verifying the author's identity and doing at least a cursory check for stolen content.

If Udemy /wants/ to be as open as YouTube, that's fine. It just means that it's no better in terms of guaranteeing accuracy, which doesn't make much sense considering you have to pay for courses. If Udemy and YouTube offer basically the same minimal guarantees that their content is accurate and not stolen, why would you ever use the paid service?

Because you have to pay to access courses in Udemy, you may not even be able to tell if a course is stolen or not without paying for it. Obviously, you'd be able to tell if it was stolen whole cloth, but if it's been paraphrased, you'll probably want to be able to look at more of the course to make sure it wasn't just a coincidence because someone else decided to do the same topic. Do you want to pay just to check if it's your own stolen work?

While I haven't done it myself, my understanding is that reporting stolen content on Udemy is unnecessarily difficult, and that Udemy generally takes a long time to take it down. Now, maybe that's not true (or maybe it's not true anymore), but that doesn't reflect well on them if it is/was.

[mirkonasato]

I think many people just don't realize that Udemy is a "marketplace"[1]. Yes, anyone can publish a course there, provided it meets some requirements. In the early days, Udemy's stated goal was to "democratize online education"[2].

There is an "Instructor Identity Verification Process"[3] which should make sure publishers own the content. No idea why it didn't prevent this case.

There is no "review by experts in the field". Whoever publishes a course is responsible for its content. If a course is inaccurate users will give it bad reviews and it won't sell. And in any case buyers get a 30-day money back guarantee.

There is an online form to report copyright violations[4], which looks simple enough to me.

[1] https://about.udemy.com/ [2] https://readwrite.com/2010/05/11/online-learning-startup-ude... [3] https://support.udemy.com/hc/en-us/articles/229234067-Instru... [4] https://copyright.udemy.com/hc/en-us

[akx]

On YouTube, you get to watch the infringing material for free (well, for the low low price for watching ads, but that's not a "tangible" transaction to most folks).

With Udemy, someone has put an actual price tag (and you need to get your credit card out and all) on the content someone else created, so it feels worse.