How to Protect Your Online Courses from Piracy and Account Sharing.

You cannot make an online course impossible to copy, but you can make copying harder, traceable and risky for the person who does it. Most leaks start in one of four places: video files that students can download, links that never expire, logins shared between several people, and screen recordings of lessons. What actually helps is streaming video through links that expire instead of offering files, showing each student's own name, email and phone number as a moving watermark on every lesson, keeping one account per student, and acting fast through platform reports and, when needed, the courts. In Egypt, publishing a protected work on the internet without the owner's written permission is a crime under Intellectual Property Law No. 82 of 2002. Below we show how big the problem is, what works, where the honest limits are, and how HBS LMS handles it.

How big is the problem of course piracy and account sharing?

There is very little public data on pirated Arabic courses specifically, so the clearest evidence comes from research on video piracy in general and from regulators in the region. The picture is consistent: copying is easy, it happens at scale, and it often runs through Telegram.

• Telegram piracy at scale (global). Researchers at Louisiana State University and the University of Texas at Arlington published what they describe as the first large-scale study of video piracy on Telegram. They analysed 1,057 channels between December 2023 and January 2026. Together these channels distributed 19,033 copyrighted titles and collected over 4.85 billion views. The study looked at films and series, not courses, but the mechanics are the ones academies describe: channels, bots and chains of backup channels built to survive takedowns.
• Account sharing (global). When Netflix announced new sharing rules in February 2023, it said that over 100 million households were sharing accounts. If one of the largest subscription businesses in the world loses that much to shared passwords, a course sold as a single login faces the same habit.
• Enforcement in the region. The Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property reported that it blocked over 7,900 websites in 2024 for intellectual property violations.

In academies we spoke to, the story is usually the same. A student sends a screenshot of a Telegram channel selling the full course for a fraction of the price, and nobody can tell which account it came from. We covered this and the other problems we kept seeing in why we built HBS LMS.

How do course videos end up on Telegram?

Almost every leak starts with one of these four routes:

• Downloadable files. Lessons uploaded as MP4 files to a shared drive or sent in a WhatsApp group. Once a file is downloaded, the copy is permanent and can be forwarded forever.
• Permanent links. An unlisted video or a drive link that works for anyone who has it. One student posts the link and the whole course is public.
• Shared logins. One person pays and gives the email and password to friends, or resells access to strangers.
• Screen recording. A paying student plays the lessons and records the screen, then uploads the recordings.

The first three are design problems that you can fix. The fourth cannot be fully fixed by anyone, which is why the next question matters.

Can any platform stop screen recording?

No, and you should be wary of anyone who promises it. Even if software could block recording on one device, a student can point a second phone at the screen. Any lesson that a student can watch, a student can record.

What you can control is what that recording carries with it. A visible watermark that shows the student's own name, email and phone number, and that moves around the video so it cannot simply be cropped out, changes the situation in two ways. It deters, because most people will not upload a video that shows their own phone number. And it traces, because if a recording does appear, you know exactly which account it came from and can act on it. The goal is not to make copying impossible. It is to make it personal.

What actually protects course content?

These steps work whatever system you use today:

1. Stop sending files. Do not share lessons as downloads, drive folders or WhatsApp attachments. Keep downloads for small resources like worksheets.
2. Stream through links that expire. Each time a logged-in student presses play, the video should load through a temporary link that stops working shortly after. A copied link then leads nowhere.
3. Put the student on the screen. Use a moving watermark with details that identify the person: name, email and phone number.
4. One person, one account. Give every student their own login. As a general practice, many services limit how many devices or sessions can use one account at the same time.
5. Write the rules down. Your terms should say that access is personal, that sharing is not allowed, and that access can be removed if a leak is traced to an account.
6. Look for leaks. Search Telegram for your course and instructor names from time to time, and ask loyal students to tell you when they see a copy.

How do you stop account sharing without punishing honest students?

Netflix offers a useful lesson. After it introduced paid sharing in more than 100 countries in May 2023, its letter to shareholders reported 5.9 million paid net additions in that quarter and said revenue in each region was higher than before the launch. Clear rules, combined with an easy way to pay, turned many people who borrowed accounts into customers.

For an academy, that means:

• Make the rule clear at checkout: one account is for one student.
• If you limit devices or sessions, give students a simple way to reset when they change phones, so honest buyers are not locked out.
• Rely on the personal watermark. Lending an account means lending your name and phone number on every lesson.
• Give sharers a legal option, such as a package price for friends or a team, so buying is easier than borrowing.

What should you do when your course leaks?

1. Collect evidence. Save the channel or group name, links, screenshots with dates and the price being asked.
2. Find the source. Check the watermark in the leaked video to identify the account, then stop that access and keep a record of what you did.
3. Report it. Telegram's FAQ asks copyright owners to send complaints about public channels, bots and sticker sets to dmca@telegram.org, and every app has a Report button. The same FAQ says Telegram does not process requests related to private groups and chats.
4. Keep reporting. Reports do work at scale. In the university study above, the researchers' reporting framework led to the takedown of 524 piracy channels and 71 bots over 61 days. But new channels appear, so treat this as routine work, not a one-off.
5. Escalate. If you can identify the seller, a formal legal notice is often enough. If not, or if it continues, move to the legal route below.

What does the law say in Egypt and Saudi Arabia?

Egypt's Law No. 82 of 2002 on the Protection of Intellectual Property Rights covers recorded lectures and audiovisual works (Article 140) and gives the author the exclusive right to authorise making a work available to the public, including through the internet (Article 147). Under Article 181, publishing a protected work through computers, the internet or other networks without prior written permission is punishable by imprisonment of not less than one month and a fine of between 5,000 and 10,000 pounds, or either penalty. The penalty multiplies with the number of works infringed, and a repeat offence carries at least three months in prison and a fine of between 10,000 and 50,000 pounds. Article 179 also lets the court order urgent measures such as stopping publication and seizing the income from it, provided the case itself is filed within 15 days.

Criminal cases under the intellectual property law are heard by Egypt's Economic Courts, which have exclusive jurisdiction over them under Law No. 120 of 2008.

One practical point is easy to miss. Article 149 requires any transfer of an author's economic rights to be in writing and to state each right, its scope, purpose, duration and place. If your instructors record courses for your academy, a written contract that sets out who owns the content is what lets you act when it leaks.

In Saudi Arabia, a new Copyright Law was published in the official gazette in February 2026 and took effect in August 2026. As the law firm Gowling WLG explains, it raises the maximum fine to one million riyals and the maximum prison term to one year, and doubles penalties for repeat offences. The list of violations, as Al Eqtisadiah reported from the gazette, includes distributing a work widely without permission and circumventing the technical protection that rights holders use. This is general information, not legal advice. Speak to a lawyer before you file.

How does HBS LMS protect your courses?

HBS LMS is built by HBS Tech for academies that want their own platform. Content protection is part of the core build:

• Streaming through expiring links. Videos are streamed, not offered as downloadable files, and the links expire, so a copied link does not keep working.
• A moving watermark on every video. Each lesson shows the student's own name, email and phone number, moving across the screen.
• Personal accounts. Each student signs in to their own account, including with Google sign-in, and is enrolled automatically when payment completes, or manually after a bank transfer.
• Team roles. Admin, sales and instructor roles keep control of content with the right people.

We are honest about the limits. HBS LMS is not DRM and it does not block screen recording, because no platform can fully stop someone filming a screen. What it does is remove the easy routes (downloadable files and permanent links) and make every remaining copy traceable to the account that made it. You can see how it works on the HBS LMS page.

Tired of finding your courses on Telegram? Tell us how you sell today and we will show you how your own platform would protect your content. Explore HBS LMS.