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dw861 [soylentnews.org] writes:

As recently reported by CyberAlberta
https://cyberalberta.ca/zooming-out-webinartvs-rampant-scraping-of-online-meetings [cyberalberta.ca]

A webinar hosting platform known as WebinarTV is actively scraping and redistributing both public and private Zoom webinars without knowledge or consent of organizers. Initial access is typically gained through third-party browser extensions such as AI-powered transcription or auto-join tools. These extensions are inadvertently provided calendar permissions by their users and, in some cases, users are willfully submitting meeting details to the WebinarTV platform without the knowledge or consent of the organizers.

There have been many reports on social media as well as online review boards indicating hidden scraping of not just publicly advertised webinars, but supposedly private meetings as well. Many organizers reported first learning that their webinars had been made publicly available through a notification email from WebinarTV themselves.

Once these tools join a meeting—either with or on behalf of a user—the session content is captured and subsequently published on WebinarTV.us. By analysing previews of uploaded webinars, CyberAlberta validated claims made by online users that WebinarTV uses screen capture to scrape content, rather than using Zoom’s built-in “Record” function. The available previews display screenshots consistent with a screen-captured view, rather than the format produced by a native Zoom recording.

WebinarTV appears to operate a business model centered around a promotional service called “Lead Advantage”, which it offers for a fee. The platform scrapes webinars en masse and positions itself as a facilitator to help these webinars reach a broader audience, which in the case of private webinars is the opposite intention. According to WebinarTV’s FAQs, Lead Advantage enables “hosts” (a term it uses to refer to individuals whose content has been scraped) to “promote their webinars through web placements, email distribution, and higher prominence directory listings”. The service encourages these hosts to bid for increased exposure, with bidding starting at USD $20.

While WebinarTV’s CEO claims to be compliant with copyright law and offers a takedown process, multiple users have reported unauthorized content uploads and ineffective removal procedures. The platform's business model and associated infrastructure suggest a deliberate and scalable operation that poses ongoing privacy, reputational, and legal risks. Webinar organizers are strongly encouraged to audit their meeting configurations, restrict access to third-party tools, and take steps to safeguard against users intentionally leveraging WebinarTV.

WebinarTV's CEO, Michael Robertson, has repeatedly defended the platform in posts on LinkedIn, Reddit, and Trustpilot (giving their own service multiple five-star reviews), claiming the platform only catalogs free and public webinars, complies with DMCA regulations, and offers a removal process. However, many users allege that takedown requests are ignored or delayed and repeatedly argue that content is being harvested without permission, often appearing confused as to how WebinarTV gained access to a webinar the organizers believed to be private.

The LinkedIn profile for Michael Robertson likely belongs to the same Michael Robertson who previously served as CEO of the now-defunct online music library MP3Tunes, which was found liable for copyright infringement and ordered to pay USD $41 million in 2014.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-robertson-932b5b8/ [linkedin.com]

Original Submission