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From the comments section: UPDATE! Evil Wylie contacted Scribd and successfully negotiated a resolution. Scribd now offers the option for an author to PERMANEN
by michael_dorfman 16y ago
From 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.
- smartrly 16y agoAs far as I can tell, Scribd's primary business model is monetizing pirated content. I agree completely. The entire system appears designed to take advantage of the fact that users will upload just about anything, and the rights holders have to actively monitor the whole of the internet for each possible infraction to protect their rights.
- jogle 16y agoJust last week I found a research paper I published while at Cornell on Scribd -- no attribution at all, no permissions, etc. It's a paper that in normal circulation costs $50 to purchase (and has been purchased a few thousand times -- whether $50 is reasonable or not is a discussion for another thread, of course). I considered letting my editor know about it to see if she wanted me to request it be taken down, but then I figured I'd rather more people see the paper anyway so left it alone.
- smartrly 16y agoThe problem, of course, is that you should've been the one making the decision in the first place.
- nl 16y agoThe article is probably in an academic journal and the author doesn't have rights to decide what to do with it. (Scribd may be evil, but academic publishing is like a coven of necromancers)
- joubert 16y ago
- pvg 16y agoSo if you ask them nicely not to be bottomfeeding scammers, they'll be happy to oblige, effective immediately and permanently, for your documents.