What Should I do if I Find a Course on a Pirate Site?

Udemy uses a proprietary player and attaches a Udemy watermark to all course videos. This is why, when you upload a video to Udemy, there is both uploading AND "processing" time, because we are encoding your videos to make them difficult to steal.

But for a motivated pirate, any content that appears on a computer screen is vulnerable to theft.  This is an unavoidable problem across the industry.  Companies like Netflix, Youtube, Amazon, etc. all have the same issue, and like them, we continue to work on new strategies and solutions to limit piracy.

As part of that strategy, Udemy has hired a company who provides anti-piracy services. In August 2018, Udemy expanded its partnership with Link-Busters to include proactive scanning of Google search results as well, an effort we call our "Piracy Detection Program.” Under this Program, Link-Busters is dedicated to enforcing the DMCA laws on a number of key courses and for these courses they proactively go after piracy issues you bring to us. 

In addition for all our other instructors who are not part of the “Piracy Detection Program,” if you find your course on a pirate site, you can submit a request using this form and Link-Busters will then proceed to send a complaint on your behalf. Please make sure to include all the requested information. Link-Busters will validate requests within approximately one week of submission and file a takedown complaint as appropriate.

Please note that because of the nature of piracy, many of these sites operate outside the law and are very difficult to get shut down, despite the best efforts of our respective teams.  Not every country has copyright laws and some pirate sites ignore lawful notices they are sent.  In these cases a request is also sent to Google so that the relevant link will be removed from their search engine results.  This makes it harder for someone to potentially find and download your course for free. 

If you would like to follow-up on your report or have any further questions, you can email [e-mail]. Link-Busters will not be able to respond to inquiries about this program.