7 ms·
Scribd.com Comes to the Dark Side
- chrisbolt 16y agoscribd responds Why am i asked for a login to see their response?
- michael_dorfman 16y agoI was half-expecting to be charged a $9 subscription fee to see the content, but then they'd have to fail to pay themselves to make the joke complete.
- riffer 16y agoAnd to clarify, it is evelreads that is asking you to login, rather than scribd
- chubs 16y agoThanks for letting me know, i've gone and disabled that setting in scribd.
- Judson 16y agoWhile I can for sure appreciate the Scribd service, charging for 24 hour access to "archives" is just silly. It reminds me of Rapidshare, which isn't exactly a brand to live up to. On the other hand. So does the website that posted the article and requires a login to read the follow-up. I like that someone called Scribed out and they fixed the situation.
- Confusion 16y agoExcept that they didn't really fix anything, because almost no one knows Scribd distributes their content and hence hardly anyone will enable that setting.
- jules 16y agoWhat exactly do you like about Scribd? Every experience I had with is has been negative. Their reader sucks and to download a pdf you have to register. When somebody posts a link to Scribd I always end up searching for another place on the internet that has it. I don't see any value Scribd provides.
- Judson 16y agoI never said I "liked" the scribd service, only that I could appreciate what they are doing, not necessarily the monetization.
- joshwa 16y agoThe charges only applied to downloading the documents, not viewing them in their HTML5 or FlashPaper viewer.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoFrom the comments section: UPDATE! Evil Wylie contacted Scribd and successfully negotiated a resolution. Scribd now offers the option for an author to PERMANENTLY OPT ALL DOCUMENTS OUT of the "archives." This is effective immediately. This doesn't mean that what they did was right (although their terms and conditions allow them to basically do whatever), but they do respond to complaints rather swiftly.
- lolhn 16y agoSo now the worthless criminal assholes at Scribd will monetize your stolen copyrighted content, and take all of it, until you notice, and tell them to stop. Fuck them. And fuck you for pretending that excuses their utterly amoral destruction of value. Scribd is one of the most disgusting websites on the Internet. They are thieves who obtain value by stealing it from others. Fuck them.
- jackowayed 16y agoSmart move by Scribd. Diffuse a lot of the "SCRIBD IS PURE EVIL!!!!!" complaints, but only a fraction of a percent of documents will get opted out, so the impact on their revenue is negligible.
- lolhn 16y agoI'd call it a disgusting and amoral move by a company whose goal is clearly to steal value created by others without sharing it appropriately. It's disappointing that anybody would call such a gutless, value-free, unethical move "smart". Are HNers all, like Scribd and (apparently) you, such uncreative, worthless sacks of shit that they must resort to theft and the praise of theft of value? What happened to creating value?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- michael_dorfman 16y agoWhat complicates things, and makes them worse, is that a large amount of the content is uploaded by people who are not the original authors/publishers, and don't actually have the rights. As far as I can tell, Scribd's primary business model is monetizing pirated content.
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoI clicked on the "UPDATE: Scribd Responds!" link, only to get a page with this message: >You are attempting to access a resource on this site which is restricted. Please login below. After re-logging in, you will be automatically directed to the page you were attempting to access.
- annajohnson 16y agoScribd should be upfront with both authors and readers about this tactic. It's very disappointing, and makes me wonder about how various other services are using content that is uploaded/distributed to them on the basis that users can access it for free.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- jimbobimbo 16y agoSeriously: what's the point of Scribd? All they do - show your document along with ads all over the place and let people download the source PDF after registration. Why not to just put PDF on your site in the first place?
- duck 16y agoOr better yet, try not to use a PDF (I know there are some practical examples of why PDF's are good, but in general they could be avoided most of the time) and use markup instead.
- Lewisham 16y agoI found it a somewhat more palatable alternative to SlideShare because I was a big fan of the HTML 5 viewer, but I had no idea this was part of their plan. It's a nasty bait-and-switch which isn't signaled when you upload at all. Not too happy with that.