The 'content partners' are most of the time people what write papers for scientific research and things like that and they haven't a clue that scribd hosts their stuff until they google for it (and plenty of them never will). If I remember correctly they also will happily re-host a pdf after you've asked to remove it (in spite of claims to the contrary).
What's really needed is a service that does this while respecting the original writers copyright.
Maybe a flash (yuck, I can't believe I wrote that) app that you can embed in a page that will render the pdf while fetching it from the source with a fall-back cache in case of overload.
At least like that the original writer has some ideas of how popular his/her writing is and where it is cited.
edit: YouTube got big because it hosted stuff that was not available elsewhere on the net in an easy to consume format. Since pdf readers are available for just about every platform there is not much of an excuse to do it this way, after all the content is already available.
If scribd worked on a 'we'll host your pdf if you upload it first' that would be one thing but instead they lift them from other places on the web, usually the authors site.
http://docs.google.com/viewer is exactly what you're asking for, except for the shitty flash part. Add &embedded=true to the URL for a chromeless version to use in an <iframe>
What's really needed is a service that does this while respecting the original writers copyright.
Maybe a flash (yuck, I can't believe I wrote that) app that you can embed in a page that will render the pdf while fetching it from the source with a fall-back cache in case of overload.
At least like that the original writer has some ideas of how popular his/her writing is and where it is cited.
edit: YouTube got big because it hosted stuff that was not available elsewhere on the net in an easy to consume format. Since pdf readers are available for just about every platform there is not much of an excuse to do it this way, after all the content is already available.
If scribd worked on a 'we'll host your pdf if you upload it first' that would be one thing but instead they lift them from other places on the web, usually the authors site.