5 ms·

Smart 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 impac

Smart 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 ago
I'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 ago
  What 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 ago
    As 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 ago
    Just 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 ago
      The problem, of course, is that you should've been the one making the decision in the first place.
      - nl 16y ago
        The 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
      I'd rather more people see the paper anyway so left it alone. I would ask the uploader to add proper attribution though.
  - mambodog 16y ago
    As far as I can tell, Scribd's primary business model is monetizing pirated content. So basically it's YouTube, but for documents.
    - rogeriopvl 16y ago
      Yeah, but youtube doesn't charge you to watch the videos...
      - mambodog 16y ago
        YouTube is still monetised by advertising... still making profit, though I guess its more upfront.
      - rmc 16y ago
        YouTube has ads on videos. It's the same as a TV station airing a pirated DVD and selling the ads
        blasdel 16y ago
        Youtube goes to a great deal of trouble to only have ads on verified content.
      - jcl 16y ago
        And Scribd doesn't charge you to read the documents. And for some of their videos, YouTube allows you to download them for a fee. http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=140496 http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
    - modoc 16y ago
      That doesn't give it any ethical high ground though...
    - jon_hendry 16y ago
      Except people post whole books to Scribed, while on YouTube, you can't post a whole ripped DVD in one post.
  - thefrostytruth 16y ago
    This move to re-sell the archives is really surprising -- I can certainly tell you that Scribd doesn't make much money selling electronic documents (i.e., ebooks) right now. The conversion rate there is b-a-d bad--my experience has been ~3 sales per 200+k reads. Other publishers have seen similar rates. They have an audience who is simply not willing to pay.

Smart 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 ago

I'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 ago
What 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 ago
  As 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 ago
  Just 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 ago
    The problem, of course, is that you should've been the one making the decision in the first place.
    - nl 16y ago
      The 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
    I'd rather more people see the paper anyway so left it alone. I would ask the uploader to add proper attribution though.
- mambodog 16y ago
  As far as I can tell, Scribd's primary business model is monetizing pirated content. So basically it's YouTube, but for documents.
  - rogeriopvl 16y ago
    Yeah, but youtube doesn't charge you to watch the videos...
    - mambodog 16y ago
      YouTube is still monetised by advertising... still making profit, though I guess its more upfront.
    - rmc 16y ago
      YouTube has ads on videos. It's the same as a TV station airing a pirated DVD and selling the ads
      - blasdel 16y ago
        Youtube goes to a great deal of trouble to only have ads on verified content.
    - jcl 16y ago
      And Scribd doesn't charge you to read the documents. And for some of their videos, YouTube allows you to download them for a fee. http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=140496 http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...
  - modoc 16y ago
    That doesn't give it any ethical high ground though...
  - jon_hendry 16y ago
    Except people post whole books to Scribed, while on YouTube, you can't post a whole ripped DVD in one post.
- thefrostytruth 16y ago
  This move to re-sell the archives is really surprising -- I can certainly tell you that Scribd doesn't make much money selling electronic documents (i.e., ebooks) right now. The conversion rate there is b-a-d bad--my experience has been ~3 sales per 200+k reads. Other publishers have seen similar rates. They have an audience who is simply not willing to pay.