Obviously crime pays , or there’d be no crime.
- G. Gordon Liddy

Scribd.com – Copyright Infringement as a Business Model?

The crime in question may be copyright infringement. The fact is, Scribd, Inc. – the owner of scridb.com – creates income by enabling copyright infringement through their web site. Scribd.com, in their own words, “is the largest social publishing company in the world, the Website where tens of millions of people each month publish and discover original writings and documents.” Also according to Scribd: “All content on Scribd is uploaded and maintained by Scribd’s users with no editorial intervention or approval from Scribd employees.”

On November 6, 2009 I received an e-mail from a friend, informing me that one of my books, and a book I publish for him, has been posted IN FULL on the scribd.com web site. As of the same date there have been 935 “reads” on both books since June this year, which translates in a loss of sales volume of almost $20,000 for me and my friend.

However, this is not where it ends. I did some further research and found more examples of copyrighted literature freely available as a download on scribd.com.

I have decided to follow up on Scribd, Inc.’s practices by starting an article series on this blog and other web sites. They will be nationally advertised through news channels such as Google News, Yahoo News, and more. In my very personl opinion, it is time that the “New Napster In Town” gets national attention.

If you are an author, publisher, or just somebody interested in the topic, please contact me through this web site, or leave a comment at the bottom of the article that interested you.

November 9, 2009
SCRIBD.COM – Copyright Infringement as a Business Model?
The crime in question may be copyright infringement. The fact is, Scribd, Inc. – the owner of scridb.com – creates income by enabling copyright infringement through their web site. Scribd.com, in their own words, “is the largest social publishing company in the world, the Website where tens of millions of people each month publish and discover original writings and documents.” Also according to Scribd: “All content on Scribd is uploaded and maintained by Scribd’s users with no editorial intervention or approval from Scribd employees.”
Read more…

November 9, 2009
SCRIBD.COM – How I learned about the copyright infringement
On November 6, 2009 I received an e-mail from a friend, informing me that one of my books, and a book I publish for him, has been posted IN FULL on the scribd.com web site. As of the same date there have been 935 “reads” on both books since June this year, which translates in a loss of sales volume of almost $20,000 for me and my friend and his co-authors.
Read more…

November 9, 2009
SCRIBD.COM – Screen Shots Proving Copyright Violation
This article demonstrates a number of screen shots made from scribd.com. They document the copyright infringement of three books. The first two books were illegally uploaded by a user named “gustafhaarhoff”. Needless to say, but the user name is faked, and scribd.com does not allow to contact other scribd.com users, unless they specifically contact you. Does that make sense?
Read more…

November 9, 2009
SCRIBD.COM – Law Firm Files Copyright-Infringement Class Action Against Scribd
The law firm of Camara & Sibley has decided to take on Scribd, seeking class action status against the site in a lawsuit filed in a Texas federal court. The charge: Like YouTube, Veoh, and other user-generated content sites, Scribd makes it just too easy to upload copyrighted content without permission, and the company should be held liable… and pay up.
Read more…

November 10, 2009
SCRIBD.COM – Contacting Professionals & Businesses
The following is a – growing – list of activities on my part to raise the awareness of the scribd.com copyright infringement issue.
Read more…

November 10, 2009
SCRIBD.COM – How Authors and Publishers Can Protect Their Work
The most important advice for any author and publisher at this time is to check the Scribd.com web site. Search for names and titles. Chances are your work is not listed, but if it is write an e-mail to copyright@scribd.com with the following content.
Read more…

March 28, 2007
Scribd, the “YouTube for documents,” copyright violations and all
VentureBeat.com
Scribd, the new Silicon Valley company pitching itself as the “Youtube for documents” is getting some good traction, in part because it hosts copyrighted material. Scribd launched three weeks ago, and is attracting 100,000 unique visitors a day. Those are the viewers. Far fewer have signed up to upload documents — about 10,000 users have uploaded 13,000 documents.

Why, we asked initially, are people coming to a site to post documents, when all they have to do is post them on their own blog? One reason is because Scribd makes it dead simple — just like YouTube makes it easy to post videos. Whatever document you want to upload (Pdf, Powerpoint, .lit, .ps, .txt, Word, etc), Scribd throws it into a convenient Flash player format, so that it can be easily read by anyone. It converts simpler documents to HTML.

This saves hassle: If you want to load say, 30 documents online, most blogging software converts them to links that you paste into your blog, and which require visitors to download them for viewing. Scribd lets you upload readable files to its site within ten seconds. Scribd makes documents both searchable and taggable. It lets you zoom in on text. Scribe wants to foster a community around the documents (like YouTube’s community around video), with comments and ratings. Each person who posts gets their own profile (here’s the person who uploaded the Da Vinci Code, apparently copyrighted material; the person’s profile links to a 17-year-old Myspace user).
Read more…

March 30, 2009
JK Rowling leads fight against free books site Scribd
Guardian.co.uk
The publishers of bestselling authors JK Rowling, Aravind Adiga and Ken Follett have been shocked by the news that their authors’ latest books are available to read for free on a US website. Internet users can not only read free copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The White Tiger and World Without End at Scribd.com, but also download the text onto their computers to edit as they see fit.

Neil Blair, Rowling’s lawyer, said the Harry Potter downloads were “unauthorised and unlawful” and that the website had been asked to take them down. “We are aware of this and we’ve asked them to take them off,” he said. “They are quite helpful and they act immediately, but they won’t police it themselves.”

The San Francisco-headquartered company was set up in March 2007 and claims to have more than 50 million readers a month, with more than 50,000 new documents uploaded by users every day. The Obama campaign used it to publish policy documents, and the site has recently signed a deal with some US publishers to post books and extracts with permission.
Read more…

September 21, 2009
Lawsuit: Copyright Filtering Technology Infringes
wired.com
Copyright filtering technology is a form of copyright infringement, according to a lawsuit against document service Scribd. The lawsuit, lodged in a Texas federal court Friday, broaches a novel legal theory in which the U.S. courts have never squarely decided. The suit maintains that the copying and insertion of a copyrighted work into a filtering system without compensating the copyright holder, or obtaining their consent, is a violation of the Copyright Act. The case comes as copyright filtering technology is quickly becoming a behind-the-scenes feature on university sites, user-generated content sites and online social networking venues.
Read more…

March 30, 2009
Scribd.com under pressure
channel4.com
Scribd.com, described as the YouTube for books, magazines and documents has come under pressure from authors and publishers over allegations of copyright infringement. The service allows anyone to upload a PDF or a Microsoft Word document and share it with the web. Content on the site ranges from rather dull documents shared between colleagues and friends to best selling novels. Searches for many author names or book titles on Scribd will quickly locate illegally hosted content. A search for JK Rowling finds Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, The Tale of Beedle the Bard which can be viewed online or downloaded to be viewed on e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle.
Read more…

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