When you post anything on Coursera — including assignments, forum posts, or reviews — you give Coursera a permanent, worldwide, free license to use, copy, modify, and share that content with other companies.
This analysis describes what Coursera's agreement states, permits, or reserves. It does not constitute a legal determination about enforceability. Regulatory applicability and practical outcomes may vary by jurisdiction, enforcement context, and individual circumstances. Read our methodology
The provision establishes Coursera's authority to repurpose user-generated content for service improvement and third-party distribution without ongoing compensation or per-use approval requirements. This operational framework permits Coursera to leverage user submissions as assets for service development and commercial syndication partnerships.
The updated terms remove the explicit guarantee that Coursera provides a 7-day free trial for subscriptions. The revised language states that 'certain subscriptions may come with a free trial period' without specifying a default duration or which subscriptions include trials. This creates operational uncertainty for users: trial availability and length are no longer stated in the main terms but are now delegated entirely to individual checkout pages. Users evaluating whether a subscription includes a trial must now visit the specific product page rather than relying on the standard terms.
View change record →Your assignments, forum posts, and other submitted content may be used by Coursera for promotional, commercial, or product improvement purposes — including being shared with third-party organizations — without additional compensation or notice to you.
How other platforms handle this
By submitting content to Walmart, you grant Walmart and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in ...
By making available any User Content through the Service, you hereby grant to Duolingo a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, adapt, modify, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, transmit, stream, ...
By submitting or posting content on or through the Service, you grant Starbucks a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such content in any and all media or distribution...
Monitoring
Coursera has changed this document before.
Receive same-day alerts, structured change summaries, and monitoring for up to 25 platforms.
"By submitting Content through the Services, you grant Coursera a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display, and distribute your Content in any and all media or distribution methods (existing now or later developed). You agree that this license includes the right for Coursera to provide, promote, and improve the Services and to make Content submitted to or through the Services available to other companies, organizations or individuals for the syndication, broadcast, distribution, promotion or publication of such Content on other media and services.— Excerpt from Coursera's Coursera Terms of Use
1) REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: This provision implicates GDPR Art. 6 (lawful basis for processing), Art. 17 (right to erasure), and Art. 5(1)(e) (storage limitation) for EU users, as a perpetual license may conflict with the right to erasure. The CCPA (Cal. Civ. Code §1798.105) creates a right to deletion for California residents that may be inconsistent with Coursera's retained license rights. FERPA (20 U.S.C. § 1232g) may apply if submitted content constitutes an education record. The FTC Act Section 5 applies if the scope of the license is not clearly disclosed at point of submission. 2)
Full compliance analysis
Regulatory citations, enforcement risk, and due diligence action items.
Free: track 1 platform + weekly digest. Monitor: 25 platforms + same-day alerts. No credit card required.
Compliance Governance Intelligence
Need to monitor specific governance provisions?
Compliance includes provision-level monitoring, governance timelines, regulatory mapping, and audit-ready analysis.
Built from archived source documents, structured governance mappings, and historical version tracking.
The provision establishes Coursera's authority to repurpose user-generated content for service improvement and third-party distribution without ongoing compensation or per-use approval requirements. This operational framework permits Coursera to leverage user submissions as assets for service development and commercial syndication partnerships.
Your assignments, forum posts, and other submitted content may be used by Coursera for promotional, commercial, or product improvement purposes — including being shared with third-party organizations — without additional compensation or notice to you.
ConductAtlas has identified this type of provision across 3 platforms. See the full comparison.
No. ConductAtlas is an independent monitoring service. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Coursera.