How to Deal With Pirated Copies of Your Online Course

Back in 2019, I was truly devastated when I found out for the first time that someone pirated my online course 😔

I made lots of mistakes and put in thousands of hours to know what I know today.

And it took me a huge amount of time to outline, film, and edit the course.

(which I did all myself- I don’t have a huge team or something)

Then, someone comes along, downloads every lesson of the course.

And put a download online that everyone can grab for $6.

Seriously, what’s wrong with people? 😡

Downloading and distributing is one thing, but then asking for money for someone else’s very hard work?

That’s just low.

.

*Breathe in, breathe out*

.

As an online course creator, you probably come across this issue at some point.

I hope it didn’t happen to you yet, so you can be prepared.

But chances are, if you found this article, it might have happened to you already.

So I just want to share how to deal with it mentally, and what kind of simple actions you can take so it doesn’t damage your business.

• Get your mind straight
• Find other illegal copies
• Simple actions to take
  • Send an email
  • Remove search results
  • Remove Reddit posts
  • Block referrer traffic
• Prevent online course piracy
• Other resources
• Conclusion

Let’s go. Let’s grab those bastards 💪

Note: I’m not a copyright lawyer, do everything on this page at your own risk.

Get your mind straight

Like I said, it was really devastated when I found out someone pirated my online course.

It really hurts me to know that while I’m trying so hard to help people, that there’s then these few people that intentionally try to hurt others.

For a few days, all kinds of questions went through my mind;

• Will anyone still buy my course if they can find it for (almost) free?
• What will I do when my business fails because of this?
• Should I stop making courses?
• Why am I making content like this at all?
• What kind of other business could I start where people can’t pirate my courses?
• Shall I go back to just offering services since those can’t be copied?
• Should I just give up now?

But I realised later that I was just making myself crazy.

Sure, these illegal downloads can have a bit of an impact on your sales, but you probably won’t go bankrupt overnight.

And I think that’s good to keep in mind:

Even if you nothing, if you just ignore the fact that these online course pirates are there, you’ll be totally okay.

Plus, people that download courses illegally, they’re probably not your target group anyway.

And it’s also good to keep in mind that those downloaders will never get the same amount of value out of your course compared to the people who purchase it;

• They don’t have access to you.
• They don’t have access to any extra materials.
• They paid less, so are less motivated to complete your course.
• They don’t have access to a community of like-minded students.
• They don’t get updates whenever you update your course.

It’s obviously okay to feel bad for a bit.

But there’s no reason to hang in it as it won’t destroy your business, and you can take some simple steps to minimise it’s impact 👇

Find other illegal copies

There’s a big chance that if there’s one illegal copy, that there are multiple.

It’s actually a bit funny.

Someone takes the effort to download all your lessons, copy all your text, and then offers it illegally in a ZIP bundle or something.

And then another person with no values comes along, and ‘steals’ that ZIP and starts reselling it too 😂

It shouldn’t be too hard to find illegal copies, just try these search terms in Google:

"your name" "online course"
"online course name" + "download"
"online course name" + "free"
"your name" + "online course name"

Keep the double quotation marks and plusses in place, they’ll make the search more precise.

Here’s an example of one of my searches:

After you’ve found a website, also be sure to try these search terms to find all related pages to that download, and possible other downloads:

site:website.com "your name"
site:website.com "course name"
site:website.com "your name" + "course name"

Add every link you find to a spreadsheet, but be sure to not download anything since it’s probably infected with malware.

Simple actions to take

Getting your content off these websites is hard, and often requires legal action.

But there’s a few simple things you can do to minimise the impact of these illegal copies.

Send an email

It’s always worth sending an email or letter to the website where’s it’s hosted, but you have to keep in mind that it’s also a certain kind of shitty people that runs these websites.

But it’s worth a try 💪

It’s best if you can include their name and physical address, but those details are usually hard to find since they’re often good at hiding.

Some tips to find their contact details;

• Go to the contact page (if they have one).
• Go to the privacy page, companies are legally required to have details there.
• Enter their domain name into a WHOIS tool to get registrar data. It’s often redacted for privacy, but sometimes you’re lucky.
• Email the host or domain registrar to get contact details.
• Google the website. You’re probably not the first one who’s trying to contact them.

Then, after you’ve found some contact details, here’s a friendly email you could send:

Hi there,

I noticed that an illegal copy of my online course [url to sales page] ended up on your website:
- [url to download page] 

I kindly remind you that this is copyrighted material, and that's it's unlawfully displayed on your website.

If you remove the infringed material before [date], I will not take any further legal action.

Kind regards,

[Your name]

I know it’s tempting to tell them what kind of assholes they are, but it’s probably more effective to stay friendly.

After you’ve sent that, wait until the date you mentioned 📅

If your pirated online course is still online, ask a lawyer to send a letter like the one below for you:

Dear [website name],

We are writing to you to notify you that our client's copyrighted material is being unlawfully displayed on your website.

Our client is the owner of the [course name] online course, and the copyright holder of all the material included in the course. The course is being offered for sale on your website without our client's permission, and this constitutes copyright infringement.

We demand that you immediately remove all infringing material from your website and cease and desist from any further infringement of our client's rights.

If you fail to comply with this notice, we will take appropriate legal action to protect our client's rights and enforce their copyright.

Sincerely,

[Lawyer's name]
[Firm name]

Attachment: [screenshot website with timestamp]

Sending such a letter often doesn’t cost much, and in some cases it will scare the website owner enough to take the pirated copy of your online course offline.

Remove search results in Google

It might be hard to get the pirated online course entirely off the website.

However, getting the search result removed from Google is pretty easy.

And if it’s not on Google, it’s much harder for people to find 🙃

To clarify: Google can’t remove the content from the website, but it can remove the webpage or images from search results.

Here’s a short video from Google about how to do it:

These are the steps to take:

Step #1: create request

Go to g.co/legal and create a new request.

Step #2: select the related Google product

To remove the webpage from Google Search, you have to select Google Search.

But be sure to check if there’s maybe some images on Google Search too, since these pirates often include a screenshot or logo of your online course.

(if they’re in both page search & image search, you have to report the content separately)

They’ll then ask if it’s in Google Search or Google Images.

This section is about getting rid of the results in Google Search, so select that, but be sure to also check if there’s any indexed materials or screenshots of your online course in Google Images.

After you’ve done that, you get a question wether it’s related to content generated by AI within a Google product.

Unless you’ve found content generated by AI that’s promoting an illegal copy of your online course, select No here.

Step #3: select reason to report content

Now, you have to select if the reason you wish to report content is legal or related to Google’s policies.

We’re talking about someone illegally distributing your online course, so select Legal Reasons 👨‍⚖️

And to finish this section of, select Intellectual Property:

Step #4: follow-up questions

Google will then ask a few more questions, here’s how I answered them:

I wasn’t sure if I should select Image/Video. The online course definitely has videos, but because those aren’t on the page I choose ‘Other’.

After you’ve done that, you can finally start creating your request:

Step #5: fill out Copyright Removal

You then get to the Copyright Removal request which you have to fill out.

Be sure to read every word on this page, and to follow the instructions carefully.

I’m not a copyright lawyer or something, but here’s what I filled out to describe the copyrighted work:

My online course, 'Make Mastery,' previously named 'Integromat Mastery,' is being offered and resold as an illegal download. Not only is the course download being offered without my permission, but they also infringe copyright by using a screenshot of one of the course lessons and by copying the text of the sales page.

See how I also mentioned the screenshot & text of the sales page?

Even if the online course isn’t on the page itself, they usually copy some course materials to ‘advertise’ your online course. That’s infringement too, and probably already reason enough to get the search result removed.

Step #6: Submit

Add your digital signature & click Submit 💪

Now it’s time to wait ⏰

If you like, you can keep an eye on it in the Removals Dashboard.

I’ve had some removal requests being processed within an hour, and others within a few days.

(I guess some removals are completely automated, some need human review)

When the case is closed, you get an email from Google:

As you can see, I got some additional homework for Reddit, but the other request was approved right away.

When it’s approved, the search result will be removed almost immediately and people will see this notification in the search results instead:

In response to a complaint that we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at LumenDatabase.org.

Victory! 🙇

Remove posts from Reddit

I found posts on Reddit linking to the illegal copies of my online course too, and decided to figure out how to remove them.

Luckily, it’s very easy.

You have to fill out the form on this page.

If the post contains images and/or text from your online course and/or sales page, you can use this text in the Details of inquiry field:

This post links to a page where my online course 'Integromat Mastery' is being offered and resold as an illegal download. Not only is the creator of this post highly likely to be aware that this copy is unauthorised, but they're also using a screenshot from one of the course lessons and copying the text from the sales page without permission.

If the post doesn’t contains anything, but is still linking to the illegal copy of your online course, it’s slightly different.

Because linking to the illegal copy is not a violation of copyright law, but it’s still against the law to link to copyrighted work if the person posting it knew of the unauthorised copying.

(they link to illegal download sites, so you have to be pretty stupid to not know)

In that case, use this in the Details of inquiry field:

This post links to a page where my online course 'Integromat Mastery' is being offered and resold as an illegal download. This person is most likely aware that this copy is unauthorized or illegal, which constitutes contributory infringement, aiding, and/or abetting copyright infringement.

After submitting, it usually takes a few minutes before the posts are being removed.

Another one down 🙏

Block referrer traffic

(so that the downloaders can decide if the course is right for them, I guess 🤦‍♂️)

When someone visits your website through a link on their website, you can see the address of the website that they were on before they came to your website.

They call this a HTTP referrer.

And we can use that to do two things;

1. Block traffic from that referrer so they can’t visit your website.
2. Redirect traffic from that referrer to something funny 👹

To do that, we need to add some text to the .htaccess file.

This file is always in the main folder of your website which you can access through the file manager of your host, or through an FTP program.

Warning: the .htaccess file of your website is very important, and can break your whole website. Be sure to make a backup before you make any changes.

Block traffic

To block traffic, add this to the very bottom of your .htaccess file:

# START BLOCK REFERRERS
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} domainname\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} anotherdomainname\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
# END BLOCK REFERRERS

Be sure to include all three rules, and to replace the domain name & domain extension.

If you want to include more referrers, duplicate the line with [NC,OR] in it like this:

# START BLOCK REFERRERS
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} domainname\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} illegalwebsite\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} downloadwebsite\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} anotherdomainname\.com [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
# END BLOCK REFERRERS

Redirect traffic

To redirect traffic to something funny or confronting, use this:

# START REDIRECT REFERRERS
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} domainname\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} anotherdomainname\.com
RewriteRule .* https://redirectwebsite.com/article-on-that-website [R=301,L]
# END REDIRECT REFERRERS

Maybe redirecting to this article about reasons why people justify pirating will teach them something 🐒

Or write a short article on your website about how such downloads hurt you & your business.

Be creative, but don’t waste too much energy since the impact of this will be rather low.

Prevent online course piracy

There are definitely some tools you can use that make it harder to download the videos of your online course.

But you can never completely prevent it. If they really want, they’ll find a way.

(seriously, I’ve heard of people filming their screen to get copies of protected videos)

So instead, I like to provide things that can’t be copied;

• My help when they get stuck.
• A community of like-minded people.
• Constant updates.
• Feedback on worksheets.
• Motivational emails as students progress.

That way, the course isn’t as valuable as a download on it’s own.

And people who did illegally download it, will realise they only got half the goods.

Other resources

I’m no legal expert or anything that can advice you on what kind of legal action to take.

But here’s some helpful articles/videos that might go more in-depth;

• Article: How to remove unwanted results from Google
• Article: Buying cheap courses could land you in court
• Article: How to protect your online course from digital piracy
• Video: How to deal with online course piracy
• Video: How to protect your online course from being copied

Let me know in the comments below if you’ve got other handy resources.

Conclusion

Having your online course pirated totally sucks 👎

Really, it’s still beyond me that there’s such big assholes who think it’s okay to pirate someone’s life work & put it online for sale.

It’s important not to let these people make you feel bad.

Those course pirates, ánd the people downloading, should feel bad for stealing from you.

F*ck them.

Keep helping people, provide value, take the simple steps I mentioned in this article, and everything will be okay.

Good luck! 🤗

And if you have any questions or other recommendations, feel free to leave a comment below.