The difference is that you are choosing the documents to put on your site. Scribd does not choose the documents to put on their site, users upload them. So if

The difference is that you are choosing the documents to put on your site. Scribd does not choose the documents to put on their site, users upload them. So if you ended up with pirated material on your site, you would be completely responsible. But that is not the case with Scribd. Anyone can submit material to Scribd, so people submit pirated material. I believe that Scribd would qualify as a safe harbor under the DMCA. So all they really need to do is respond to requests to take down pirated material. Veoh was once sued for infringing copyright. The judge ended granting a summary judgement in favor of the defendant on the basis that Veoh was just providing user-submitted content and that Veoh did not even supervise the files that were uploaded. I am reading that as saying that if Veoh actively checked user uploads for pirated material, they might might have lost the court case or at least had their motion for summary judgement dismissed. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#IO_Group_Inc._vs._Veoh_Networks_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Ac.... That said, Scribd does have a problem with piracy.. One of my first introductions to Scribd was when I was searching for excepts from a book and found the full book on Scribd.