The Bleeding Hills
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I’m not speaking on behalf of Scribd here, although I am working there. I’m simply curious – infringing content is an obvious problem, what is your solution?
Every legitimate web site that allows users to publish anything has to deal with this problem. If you think that’s how all these villains make money, I can disappoint you – in those cases that I’m aware of, infringing content is responsible for well under 5% of revenue and is a net cost; pretty big one at that.
Some smart people thought long and hard about it, and came up with
DMCA. It’s a pretty ugly compromise for all involved (not just the copyright owners), but at least it can be implemented in practice.
If you can think of a better solution that doesn’t involve banning the Internet, please enlighten.
Alexey,
I am sorry if I sound harsh, but you are totally missing the point. First, scribd.com is making big profits – if indirectly – through allowing copyright infringement, and that profit is made partly through profound losses to authors and publishers. The scribd.com method of storing documents in their database (without the owner’s permission) to verify them against illegal uploads, is a solid legal problem in itself (talk to some legal experts – I did). Secondly, scribd.com does not provide any means to copyright holders to contact users who are illegally, or at least unauthorized, uploading their documents. Thirdly, the sign-up process at scribd.com is highly flawed. As I wrote in one of my entries, you can sign up as JohnMcCain@TheWhiteHouse.com and upload any kind of document, copyrighted or not. Other, similar web sites send at least an e-mail to a new user that needs to be confirmed, otherwise the account will not be activated. This simple measure – really, a standard in the industry – would help as a first step to discourage unauthorized uploads.
The next point that you are missing is the amount of roughly $20,000 my business lost according to the number of “reads” from the scribd.com web site. Another publisher, booklocker.com, found one of their books being read a mere 13,000+ times! You can imagine the damage that was done here. Apparently, that’s not scribd.com’s problem.
I do agree that it would be difficult to make the scribd.com web site fool-proof, but I also see that scribd.com didn’t do enough. As I wrote, the idea behind Scribd.com’s “Copyright Management System” is flawed, but it could be corrected if scribd.com would allow copyright holders to have the documents removed if requested. Another measure would be increased discouragement – like a full-blown legal document displayed at each new upload as it is industry standard. These are just a few ideas I had in the last two minutes, and I don’t have enough time to list the other 100+ ideas (which also tells me that these “smart people” you mentioned missed the whole picture).
The real problem, though, is the scribd.com management. Let me quote from South Park: “Sometimes what’s right isn’t as important than what’s profitable.” There is nothing wrong about making a good profit with a good product. In the same sense I would like to have my $20,000 back…
Regards,
Wilfried
Some fatal assumptions here. 1) A “read” simply means that somebody clicked on an uploaded text. It doesn’t mean they read farther than two lines, and judging from the content you’ve used as examples of copyright infringement, I don’t see $20,000 in sales coming from that material. 2) A “read” does not equate to a lost sale, any more than a zillion downloaded music files equate to lost sales. Even assuming the entire document was read, not just clicked on and quickly exiting upon loading. Not everybody who got something for free would have paid for it if free was not an option. This is true even of items that can legally be obtained for free.
Y really want people to STEAL my WORK. Screen shots are WELCOMED. I am a publisher, and I am willing to even pay people to steal my work. My enemy is not piracy is obscurity!!! I am selling more BECAUSE of SCRIBD. One of my authors said last week: “What if my book is downloaded and everybody in the world pass my book to each other… I could lost my work in the internet sea” And I responded to him… What??? Why do you think you are so good that people would do that? haha.. people.. wake up… think different… go givers sell more!!!! (hug)
@AlexValdo:
Sorry, usually I don’t condemn people for responding, but, really, you wouldn’t recognize a tree in the middle of a forest. Copyright infringement – as supported by scribed.com – hurts those authors who write something that is in demand. My technical books still sell continuously since 2005, and I wouldn’t like to see them published for free.
@ Wilfried: Thats the thing. People has the RIGHT to review the 100% of the book BEFORE buying it in a brick and mortar bookstore, right? What I discovered is that this works great in internet too (actually readers love this!). I can understand If you don’t like to do this because I know that Corporation spirit. I was there, but no more. I now prefer to show some love and respect to people who reads me and they will respect me as an author. This is all about giving not piracy. Learn from the music industry, the same is happening with books now, specially digital. FYI Study the life of Cohelo (author) so you can have the complete picture of what you are missing as an author. And while you say I cant recongnize a tree in a forest, I think that what you cant recognize is how deep internet has changed the rules. It is all about time. In the near future, you will must decide between obscurity or to be known by opening your content to the public. If you don’t understand this, dont worry, as I said above is all about time, you’ll see. A new paradigm is on the way and is happening now as we talk.
@Alex: I understand where you’re coming from, and reading your comment, it makes sense. It does, however, not explain why scribed.com supports infringing copyrights.