To follow along with the purchased video courses at the Udemy website, a so called DRM decryption module (Digital Rights Management) must be installed in your web browser.

Its main purpose is to prevent viewers from making local copies of the video files and distribute them for free, which in theory could cause more and more people to obtain the media without making a purchase.  You likely encountered DRM-protected media many times, as it is used to protect DVDs, BluRays, video games and also E-Books.

Experience has shown (and still is showing us today), that DRM technology in itself is not only a wasted (and also an expensive) effort, but especially harmful towards us customers, who simply desire to playback the purchased videos without any technical problems.

Why is DRM useless?

• Everyone knows: It does not take long at all, until someone broke the copyright mechanism of any protected media (video games, movies, ...) so that pretty much every DRM "protected" video game, movie or TV show is easy to find, for free, on the internet, even by non-tech-savvy people.
  
  Most of the people do still rather pay for learning and entertainment media that they use, regardless of technical protections being there or not.  People are in general more mindful and respectful than many content distributors assume.
  
  If you play video games and are not already familiar with the online store called GOG.com, you should really consider it, because well-known and beloved game developers distribute their games on that platform without any DRM protection:
  • https://www.gog.com

Why does DRM cause problems?

• Not every device and every web browser, media player, etc. is able to (legally) decrypt DRM protected media.
  
  This is because the DRM technology is completely proprietary, so it is entirely controlled by very specific private companies.  They do decide, whether to distribute a DRM software module for a platform.
• DRM is often used to force people to use an App to access purchased media.  Although Udemy didn't go that far yet (thank God, the Udemy app really sucks even on high-end smartphones), the DRM requirement still forces you to use a compatible web browser, where it would certainly be easier to stream the video with just a video player (like VLC for example).
  
  User authentication for preventing non-authorized access could still be managed through "HTTP Basic Authentication" – this is still effective and offers maximum compatibility with all kinds of software, so that the people, who purchased the media, can choose an application for themselves.
• You are not the one, who decides, whether you can access your purchased DRM protected media.
  
  Not only does DRM dictate the proprietary software products you have to use, to access your purchased media.  It can selectively deny people from accessing the media at any time.
  
  You have purchased hundreds of games on Steam and now expressed something, that the Steam moderators consider to be "harmful language"?  Congratulations, your account is now suspended and therefore you cannot access any of your purchased contents anymore.  Regardless of them being stored on your local computer, that is.

Now, Udemy is likely one of the most popular E-Learning platforms on the internet, and even large corporations are among their customers.

Isn't it questionable, that they implement DRM technology on an educational platform?  Considering the DRM-free markets for video games, that are desired way more by the masses, what is the reasoning behind limiting people's ability to learn?

Is it such a pain to imagine, that people watch educational content offline with their own media player of choice?  To me this seems ridiculous.

The goal of this petition is to make the platform operators of Udemy consider to remove the DRM protection from the video courses altogether, so that people have a more pleasant experience with learning and are not unnecessarily deprived of their freedom.