[OPEN LETTER TO THE STAFF] Massive copyright infringement on SoloLearn

Question

I keep observing that electronic books are available for download through hyperlinks within the SoloLearn app. Many of these books are not intended for free distribution because of copyright restrictions and are distributed illegally via the Internet. The authors, the publishers and their employees thereby escape revenue, with which they make their living.

I ask you to pay more attention to such forum posts and to delete them immediately, since you too can be made responsible for illegal distribution.

Answer 1

@ Ace

Thank you for your kind reply! :-)

It is in SoloLearn's own interest to keep its place clean of illegal material.

Answer 2

All to whom it concerns.

Answer 3

AFAIK it is not illegal as long as you comply with all DMCA notices and you don't host the infringing material. SL has nothing to fear as it stands. There are Facebook groups sharing direct download links (weird unheard of hosting) with one another. There are mp3 search engines. There are torrent sites. There are even a few public direct download sites. If a link to a pirated book/movie/etc gets posted, nobody gets any heat. Those few cases you hear about are for the purpose of fear-mongering: A guy gets a 20k fine, millions of others go unnoticed. A forum gets in kak for a user's post, thousands more continue business as usual.

Ethically, I think the SL team do a great job since I've yet to come across any infringement other than code snippets. Every post/thread has a report button, so a lot is up to the community.

Just to shed some positive light on SL.

Answer 4

JFS Λиϊмϊόи everybody on Sololearn,
BTW good job Jan Markus

Answer 5

As nonzyro put it. It is not illigal to share the links as long as they are not hosted by SL, i.e. the files.