Launch of New Anti-Piracy Vendor

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Launch of New Anti-Piracy Vendor

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi instructors,

 

The idea of finding your hard work available on a third-party platform is frustrating and this is a concern that Udemy takes seriously. We want to take this opportunity to share some insights on what Udemy’s efforts to fight piracy look like thus far. 

 

In a continued effort to combat piracy, as many may already be aware, we have expanded our partnership with a new anti-piracy vendor, Corsearch. Through this partnership, any instructor can reach out to Corsearch if they discover their course(s) being offered on a third-party platform(s) without their permission. Instructors can fill out the Piracy Reporting Form. Upon receipt of the instructor's piracy report, Corsearch will file a legal notice called a “takedown notice” to major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing to stop the traffic from reaching the pirated content. Removing the pirated links from search engines allows prospective students to instead be pointed toward legitimate publications on Udemy or your own site. 

 

While the specific courses eligible for the program will vary over time, just as before, we have a Piracy Detection Program which is designed to ensure coverage globally for the courses which are exclusive to Udemy and are the highest-trafficked paid courses on Udemy. Under Corsearch, we have increased our course coverage more than before! If you are unsure as to whether or not your course is covered under our current Piracy Detection Program or would like us to review your eligibility in the program, please reach out to us at piracy@udemy.com and we will be happy to assist you. 

 

Corsearch will proactively and regularly monitor major search engines for any piracy-related versions of your Udemy course(s), and send removal notices on the instructor’s behalf if the pirated versions of the Udemy course(s) is found on the top major search engines. To learn more about the Piracy Detection Program or the piracy measures we are currently enforcing, please refer to our Help Center articles and the Intellectual Property Policy

 

We hope this information helps in better understanding the steps we are currently taking to combat piracy. We appreciate your continuous feedback and support of all our learners and instructors. Don't hesitate to reach out to us directly at piracy@udemy.com with any additional questions you may have- the team will be more than happy to assist you.

10 Comments
ScottDuffy
Community Champion Community Champion
Community Champion

Any comment on why you change privacy vendors frequently? This is the third one in the last four or five years, that I recall. 

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

Is Udemy actually committed to fighting piracy this time around? Past attempts have seemed to make no difference. Even though my courses were eligible, I still found my courses on just as many torrent sites as always.  As a result, I manually issue takedown requests to search engines once or twice per year, since it's fairly easy. But I'd rather not have to deal with it myself, though.

 

I reached out to Udemy multiple times in the past (through the instructor support), but every question I had in regards to the anti-piracy program were completely ignored. And by that I mean that I never received any response and it looked like my tickets were just killed internally. It looked to me like Udemy was not comfortable answering my questions because the program was clearly not working.

 

So, is it going to work this time around, and is Udemy actually committed to it?

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @ScottDuffy

 

Piracy continues to be an ongoing concern for our instructors. As the Udemy platform continues to grow, so does the need to explore new approaches to prevent piracy from occurring. At Udemy, we are always looking for ways to improve our instructors’ experience and find better ways to protect our platform and our instructors from piracy. We hope to remain flexible so that we can find partners that can maximize our course coverage, have the greatest impact against pirate sites, and improve SEO so that legitimate postings rise to the top of search results. While fighting infringement is a constant battle, we’re confident that our recent updates will be a great benefit.

 

We appreciate your understanding as always as we continue to improve ways to combat piracy! 
 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community 

Bella
Community Manager
Community Manager

Hi @ba0708,

 

Thank you for flagging your concerns. I truly apologize for the trouble you had contacting our support team to ask about the Piracy Detection Program. We guarantee our piracy reporting form is a secure way for you to report piracy, but If you have any specific questions, I highly recommend reaching out to us directly at piracy@udemy.com so our specialized team can further assist you with your request.

 

We also have the following article: Piracy Detection Program F.A.Q, where you can find a lot of helpful information.

 

In regards to the efficacy of the program, our new anti-piracy vendor, Corsearch, has a 98% success rate of getting pirated links removed from major search engines. They focus their efforts on search engine listings as they have found this to be the most powerful way of minimizing the spread and consumption of pirated content. If pirate links are eliminated from Search, prospective students will instead be pointed toward legitimate publications on Udemy or your own site. 
 

I hope this helps. Please Let me know if you have any other questions here!

 

Bella Almeida

Udemy Community

LizBrownUX
Storyteller Storyteller
Storyteller

Great news!

kararonin
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

This is great news. Does anyone have any tips on what we can do as instructors to search if our courses are on other sites without our permission? Would a simple Google search for the course name be sufficient? 

ba0708
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

Thank you, @Bella. I just did a manual check of my courses and actually found that Udemy did indeed issue DMCA takedown notices (through a partner). It's definitely not perfect since it's automated, but the number of takedown notices I had to send myself were about half of what they used to be. So it does seem like something is working, which is great!

 

@kararonin I usually just search for the course name within double quotes followed by the word "torrent," i.e. "[course name]" torrent on each search engine. That will get you a long way I think. If you need pointers for sending the removal requests, you are welcome to send me a PM. 🙂 

kararonin
Trailblazer Trailblazer
Trailblazer

@ba0708 thank you for your quick reply. I will try what you suggested and hopefully that will give me some information. I'll be sure to PM you if I have any questions for the removal requests. 

EricYeboah294
Researcher
Researcher

l think this is a great step Udemy has taken, it will help protect instructors courses, well done.

MichaelPog
Mentor Mentor
Mentor

@Bella thank you so much for this update and thank you Udemy for taking this concern seriously.

 

Piracy is not a victim-less crime and many people around the world don't understand it. So having a vendor actively and effectively fighting it is a much welcome step.

I had poor experience with the previous vendors. I hope the new one is much better.