

Scott vs. Scribd, Inc - aw3c2
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txsdce/4:2009cv03039/699403/1/

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jgrahamc
You know, I don't like Scribd either and it pissed me off royally when The
Geek Atlas appeared on the site for free download.

But this lawsuit seems bogus to me. When my book was up on Scribd they quickly
removed it once the publisher complained and it's now gone.

It annoys me greatly when I see people can read my book for free somewhere
because I don't get paid. But I ask myself exactly how many of those people
would actually have bought the book or the PDF in the first place. I'm
guessing that I really don't lose much money from this sort of infringement.

I'm very happy that there are ways to limit it, but the genie is out of the
bottle for digital content and the answer is not suing Scribd.

In the lawsuit the plaintiff complains about this process and goes on to claim
that Scribd keeping a copy of her book so that they can automatically detect
future infringing uploads is itself copyright infringement.

I'm very happy that Scribd has a copy of my book somewhere in their system to
automatically detect people uploading it when they shouldn't. The last thing
I'd want is for them to remove it and then not know how to stop people
uploading it again.

In fact, I'd be willing to sign a copyright assignment form allowing them to
hold the text for this specific purpose.

~~~
davidw
> once the publisher complained and it's now gone.

There's something to be said for not having to chase after people to keep them
from ripping you off, though.

> I'm very happy that there are ways to limit it, but the genie is out of the
> bottle for digital content and the answer is not suing Scribd.

I agree with that. Which makes it something of a vexing question.

~~~
jgrahamc
_There's something to be said for not having to chase after people to keep
them from ripping you off, though._

Agreed. But The Geek Atlas was ripped off within hours of it becoming
available as a PDF and it appeared in a variety of seedy places on the net
which would have been near impossible to actually shutdown.

The only real solution is to target the major providers because they'll be the
major conduit for bad copies. That's why it was important to go after Scribd
quickly.

What can be done is have publishers work with people like Scribd to
preemptively upload ways of identifying copyrighted works so that individual
authors don't have to police the Internet.

 _I agree with that. Which makes it something of a vexing question._

I'm not sure it's even a question. People are going to rip off my book and I
cannot prevent all infringement. I have to do two things:

1\. Concentrate on other streams of revenue around the book (this is vital
anyway since I'm not going to make a fortune with it even if there was no
infringement at all).

2\. Make sure that major infringements are dealt with quickly.

Of course, I hope you'll go out and buy it, or the e-version, or read it on
Safari, but there will be some people who decide to download it from some bad
site. Now, I wonder what percentage of those people actually read it.

~~~
davidw
The 'vexing question' is how to appropriately balance things so that people
still have an incentive to create content.

BTW, I'd be happier to buy a copy myself if there were more sites in Italy.
Between da Vinci, Galileo and so on and so forth (and don't forget the Greeks
in Sicily or the Romans) there are quite a few interesting places to visit!

~~~
jgrahamc
Well, some people seem to think that content isn't worth anything and people
won't pay for it:

<http://paulgraham.com/publishing.html>

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shimon
The most interesting conspiracy theory in this lawsuit is that Scribd might be
doing the whole PDF-hosting business as a loss leader in order to enable an
automatic infringement-detection business.

In other words, Scribd's document-hosting is sort of a honeypot, designed to
attract both legit and infringing uploads, as well as complaints from
publishers regarding infringing uploads. Collecting all of this, they have
both a document hosting site _and_ a database of stuff publishers have claimed
as copyrighted.

You couldn't very well call up every publisher and say "hey, send me a PDF of
everything you have a copyright on so I can start a business doing automatic
copyright-checking." But if you have a popular document hosting site, you can
rely on the publishers to incrementally develop that database for you. And
your business goals line up very well with your DMCA legal requirements.

This would be a very clever hack. I doubt Scribd chose to pursue it
intentionally, but either way, an "Is this blob of text copyrighted by someone
else?" API would be a very valuable service.

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paulgb
Summary:

\- Scribd is a publisher, not a service provider, and therefore should not be
granted the DMCA's safe harbor provisions.

\- Scribd knows that they publish copyrighted material.

\- Scribd profits from publishing the copyright material.

\- When a content creator requests that content be removed, Scribd retains a
copy of that material for use in later identifying copyrighted material,
without the permission of the content creator.

\- Additionally, Scribd allows authors to upload their works to the copyright
protection system in order to be recognized when uploaded by a user, but
Scribd requires the content creator waive their right to sue Scribd before
they may do so.

\- Case law originating on the west coast is popularly interpreted as granting
companies like Scribd safe harbor provisions.

The book that resulted in the case, "Stocks and Bonds, Profits and Losses", is
a children's book written in 1984 (published 1985) which is now out of print.

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jhancock
A year or two ago I explained to my mother, a lawyer of 30 years, how web
sites like YouTube work. I explained that some people figured out that a
provision in the DMCA implied these practices were ok and case-law seems to
uphold this. She was blown away. To be fair, my mom doesn't do email or surf
the web, ever, but its amazing how many people don't understand this
substantial change in intellectual property law.

~~~
shimon
Could you provide some more information on what changes you are referring to?

Are you saying that before the DMCA, Scribd's standard operating practice
would have been more illegal or more legal?

~~~
jhancock
"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has notable safe-harbor provisions which
protect Internet service providers from the consequences of their users'
actions." - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_harbor>

Every legal opinion I've ever read thinks scribd, youtube, etc can only exist
due to this law.

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aw3c2
Direct link to the PDF: [http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/texas/t...](http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-
courts/texas/txsdce/4:2009cv03039/699403/1/0.pdf)

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Tichy
Hm, let's see - is reading through a 22 page pdf about a court case
(presumably written in lawyer lingo) good use of hacker time?

~~~
davidw
Much more relevant than CIA manuals, 'the problem with black people', treasure
islands or some of the other crap getting voted up.

~~~
Tichy
Maybe - I don't question that the case in question could be interesting, but
surely it could be summarized in less than 22 pages of lawyer lingo?

~~~
davidw
No argument there.

Basically it's an infringement case, stating that removing stuff when asked
isn't good enough.

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mdragon
Anyone got a Scribd mirror of the PDF?

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scotty79
Can't people use some better models for monetizing on their creations in place
of old "Pay us or we won't show you!"? It's hurting all of us and we have
technology now to deal with this some better way.

