YouTube absolutely makes money off of pirated content. They shows ads on top of it.
They also aren't making close to $20/view on a video, which is enough for even one viewer to pay for having that video reviewed by hand for infringement. Moreover, youtube has setup many systems in place to detect infringing materials. With the charges that Udemy has per copy, they should be paying people to review every video.. or have a $50 upload fee that covers that manual review process. That would kill a lot of the problem.
Youtube actually have quite a civilised policy on pirated content. They do make money on the ads but if you go to them and prove you are the copyright holder they divert the ad payout on pirated stuff to you rather than the poster. I've got a friend making quite a lot of money by having asserted legal copyright on some much pirated content. Udemy could perhaps offer to do something similar?
I agree, wrt youtube's current policies. I'm just stating that given the pricing model Udemy has in place, that a manual review process on every video would not be unreasonable, as compared to say youtube.
The normal excuse for piracy is "I would not have bought it anyway". I do buy a lot music but I also pirate, there is just no way for one to accumulate all those gigabytes of music collection without paying more money than what you make in a lifetime. I really wouldn't, and couldn't, have bought it anyway. Hence no loss for the creator.
Now on udemy people are still paying for it, that means they are ready to pay, and whatever they pay should in that case go to the correct rights holder. There is where the comparison with Napster doesn't hold.
> But I had never seen a business actually profiting from piracy.
The author acknowledges that piracy is "normal", but is drawing the line at directly profiting. YouTube and Napster didn't charge consumers for pirated content.
> I guess "move fast and break things" is a great motto until it's your stuff getting broken.
I hate "move fast break things" but this critique doesn't make any sense, hasn't this aphorism always been about breaking your own stuff and how that's okay as long as you're moving fast?
Perhaps a better one would be:
I guess disruption is great until it's your livelihood being disrupted.