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# How Udemy Is Profiting From Piracy — Medium

### How Udemy Is Profiting From Piracy

I watched a little drama unfold over the last few days involving Troy Hunt, a
security specialist and a "tall, fine-looking Australian" according to some
mutual friends:

Classic. This stuff happens. Especially in the video training world. When I ran
Tekpub it would take (typically) a day or two (sometimes just a few hours) for
the torrents to hit. It's a price of doing business.

But I had never seen a business actually _profiting from piracy_. Not until Troy
mentioned Udemy. And then I wondered: _is any of my stuff up there_?

So headed over and even as I entered the search term for the first video I could
think of (a MeteorJS course I did for Pluralsight) I knew what I would find:

![][1]

Yep. That's mine.

It was submitted by "Robert C". How clever:

![][2]

I started to dig a little more but then stopped. I know what's in there. _It
took me all of three seconds to find the first title that popped in my head_.

#### A Very Shady Business

As I mention, piracy happens. But I've never seen it rewarded so openly… so
brazenly. Yes I'm sure there are plenty of good courses at Udemy, but there are
clearly a HUGE NUMBER of pirated ones.

The question is: _does Udemy know this_?

The answer: **Of course they do**. Why do I say that? Because I filled this
little box with four letter words:

![][3]

Udemy's way of dealing with copyright problems.

The fun thing is you have to be logged in to report abuse. Isn't that neat? And
sleazy?

Can't think of a reason to have a box like this next to the video itself unless
you know copyright infringement is part of your business plan.

How do these people go to work every day and feel good about it?

I think this is probably their only measure of control in place. It has to be.
My videos are **watermarked and I mention Pluralsight throughout**. Anyone doing
any kind of reasonable copyright checks would see that.

TheNextWeb [wrote about Troy's story today][4] but clearly — the story is bigger
than this. **Udemy is full of pirated material and it clearly has no process for
checking copyright**.

I think that sucks. I think it sucks because I work really hard on these videos
and someone just stole it and is selling it on Udemy… and Udemy not only let
them do this, they're encouraging others to do the same.

So hey! Video Pirates of the world! You don't need to just give your pirated
shit away on BitTorrent — [**take it to Udemy and make some money**][5].

I sincerely hope Udemy is flooded with pirated content. Lawsuit fodder.

Let the games begin.

#### Update

No response from Udemy yet (which I expect — they need to verify some things I'm
sure).

Since I posted this a few hours ago it's [hit Hacker News][6] and people are
spreading the word that Udemy is doing next to nothing when it comes to offering
stolen content. It seems to happen quite often:

Udemy has responded to a Facebook post and the thread is a nice, condensed
version of the HN thread which is, basically:

> Udemy sucks

and

> What do you expect Udemy to do? It's too hard checking the copyright of every
submission.

It's not like people just woke up to copyright infringement. Yes, it happens —
but not like this. _Udemy actively makes money on the pirated content until they
are pressured to take it down_.

**That's illegal people**.

Here's the response from Udemy (talking about Troy Hunt's course. Mine is still
up there):

![][7]

So there it is. **Udemy is crowd-sourcing copyright compliance**. Meanwhile they
make money on this content until someone complains.

Sleazy.

#### Update 2 (9 hours after report)

I just received this response from Udemy after I complained via their site:

![][8]

Non-response response

Classic. Now before I get completely aggro on this, I do understand they need to
be sure of the claim before taking something down. That makes sense. _However
it's not really that hard to verify that I'm who I say I am._ My fucking name is
on the course for shit's sake.

The stalling is galling. _A physical signature._ A request for identification of
the work even though they themselves included a link to it. Information about
contacting me in the email **that they contacted me with**.

I sort of figured my statement was … rather direct and concise (with a nice dose
of 4-letter words).

Here's a shovel Udemy. Keep digging.

[1]: [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*j66yjLOWSY7cZUleDQE-ww.png]
[2]: [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*S8olDaxm89FON0aFjf0Bwg.png]
[3]: [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*3V7fAmQWT6n6OP4Ud-SBbQ.png]
[4]: [http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/11/27/udemy-published-a-pirated-course-
from-pluralsight-and-still-hasnt-removed-it/]
[5]: [https://teach.udemy.com/?ref=teach_header]
[6]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10638795]
[7]: [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*CW88E5FqeXzBJjtimkq1rQ.png]
[8]: [https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*9frvkT7cXhZnphrwQa0RLQ.png]