When you submit a link to a PDF you implicitly submit it to scribd who then purloin the content and make it available through their interface.
They claim to honor take-down requests, but I've been caught out by this. Before I knew if their distasteful practices I submitted a link, they took a copy, and now they won't take it down because I'm not the copyright holder. The person who is the copyright holder doesn't know, and I've been unable to get in touch, despite trying.
I'm pretty sure they'd be unhappy about it if they knew.
So now I never submit a link to a PDF, I always create a place-holder and submit that, or find some other reference. The existence of these auto-links to scribd is one aspect of HN that's makes me feel genuinely grubby, and you should only ever submit a PDF if you're happy to have it copied without permission.
How is that convenience? Scribd doesn't work (for me) at all because I don't have Flash installed. On other machines, it takes forever to load a page with a whole pile of static Flash embeds, each of which is a sand-trap for my scroll wheel.
Comments
What's with the [scribd] tag when direct linking to a .pdf file? It's becoming common, but I can't understand it.
When you submit a link to a PDF you implicitly submit it to scribd who then purloin the content and make it available through their interface.
They claim to honor take-down requests, but I've been caught out by this. Before I knew if their distasteful practices I submitted a link, they took a copy, and now they won't take it down because I'm not the copyright holder. The person who is the copyright holder doesn't know, and I've been unable to get in touch, despite trying.
I'm pretty sure they'd be unhappy about it if they knew.
So now I never submit a link to a PDF, I always create a place-holder and submit that, or find some other reference. The existence of these auto-links to scribd is one aspect of HN that's makes me feel genuinely grubby, and you should only ever submit a PDF if you're happy to have it copied without permission.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=836544
It's just a convenience link for viewing the PDF on scribd rather than downloading / using a plugin.
How is that convenience? Scribd doesn't work (for me) at all because I don't have Flash installed. On other machines, it takes forever to load a page with a whole pile of static Flash embeds, each of which is a sand-trap for my scroll wheel.
But it's a direct link to a pdf, not to the scribd page.
There is a separate link inside the [scribd] tag.