You know, I don't like Scribd either and it pissed me off royally when The Geek Atlas appeared on the site for free download.
But this lawsuit seems bogus to me. When my book was up on Scribd they quickly removed it once the publisher complained and it's now gone.
It annoys me greatly when I see people can read my book for free somewhere because I don't get paid. But I ask myself exactly how many of those people would actually have bought the book or the PDF in the first place. I'm guessing that I really don't lose much money from this sort of infringement.
I'm very happy that there are ways to limit it, but the genie is out of the bottle for digital content and the answer is not suing Scribd.
In the lawsuit the plaintiff complains about this process and goes on to claim that Scribd keeping a copy of her book so that they can automatically detect future infringing uploads is itself copyright infringement.
I'm very happy that Scribd has a copy of my book somewhere in their system to automatically detect people uploading it when they shouldn't. The last thing I'd want is for them to remove it and then not know how to stop people uploading it again.
In fact, I'd be willing to sign a copyright assignment form allowing them to hold the text for this specific purpose.
There's something to be said for not having to chase after people to keep them from ripping you off, though.
Agreed. But The Geek Atlas was ripped off within hours of it becoming available as a PDF and it appeared in a variety of seedy places on the net which would have been near impossible to actually shutdown.
The only real solution is to target the major providers because they'll be the major conduit for bad copies. That's why it was important to go after Scribd quickly.
What can be done is have publishers work with people like Scribd to preemptively upload ways of identifying copyrighted works so that individual authors don't have to police the Internet.
I agree with that. Which makes it something of a vexing question.
I'm not sure it's even a question. People are going to rip off my book and I cannot prevent all infringement. I have to do two things:
1. Concentrate on other streams of revenue around the book (this is vital anyway since I'm not going to make a fortune with it even if there was no infringement at all).
2. Make sure that major infringements are dealt with quickly.
Of course, I hope you'll go out and buy it, or the e-version, or read it on Safari, but there will be some people who decide to download it from some bad site. Now, I wonder what percentage of those people actually read it.
The 'vexing question' is how to appropriately balance things so that people still have an incentive to create content.
BTW, I'd be happier to buy a copy myself if there were more sites in Italy. Between da Vinci, Galileo and so on and so forth (and don't forget the Greeks in Sicily or the Romans) there are quite a few interesting places to visit!
What does "the genie is out of the bottle" mean? Does it mean: it is now possible to do X.
If that is the case, then the "genie" has been out of the bottle to do a variety of criminal activities for the duration of this last recorded leg of human civilization.
Isn't the whole point of having an enforced civil order to whack the hand that reaches for the bottle?
The plaintiff's points were quite clear and reasonable.
"In fact, I'd be willing to sign a copyright assignment form allowing them to hold the text for this specific purpose."
What I meant was that since digital content is trivially copyable and since DRM is circumventable we have to learn to live in a world where anything that can be digital is likely to be copied.
Sounds like 'the olive oil' business model.
I'll have to ask you to explain that since I have not seen The Godfather.
I understood that, but don't accept the premise of the "digital" changes the world (in this context). Can you imagine a business selling bootleg (hard) copies of text books opening shop in a university town? What's so hard about making paper copies? Sell it at a bit over copying cost and you'd still be underselling the legitimate publisher by a huge margin. Where would the students buy their books?
The fact that the content is in "digital" even makes checking for notices of copyrights that much more trivial. We're all geeks here, so lets be honest:
"Copyright (c) 2008 Robert Liguori and Patricia Liguori. All rights reserved."
If you are taking a digital format and converting it to the scribd format, how trivial is it for you to write a function that greps for the "Copyright" and "all rights reserved" phrases in the text?
The Olive Oil business:
(A protection racket. Organized crime. etc.)
Your Scribd example is a bad one because that's an example of O'Reilly putting a sample of that book on Scribd to tempt people to buy the real thing.
Basically, I think she's going to have a really hard time proving any harm. She says her book was downloaded 100 times. Now prove that that equals 100 lost sales, or X lost sales for any value of X.
My assumption is that if my book was downloaded from Scribd 100 times that I've lost way less than 100 sales (if any) which at royalty rates on a book means I might have lost a couple of dollars. For that reason I wouldn't sue Scribd.
Comments
You know, I don't like Scribd either and it pissed me off royally when The Geek Atlas appeared on the site for free download.
But this lawsuit seems bogus to me. When my book was up on Scribd they quickly removed it once the publisher complained and it's now gone.
It annoys me greatly when I see people can read my book for free somewhere because I don't get paid. But I ask myself exactly how many of those people would actually have bought the book or the PDF in the first place. I'm guessing that I really don't lose much money from this sort of infringement.
I'm very happy that there are ways to limit it, but the genie is out of the bottle for digital content and the answer is not suing Scribd.
In the lawsuit the plaintiff complains about this process and goes on to claim that Scribd keeping a copy of her book so that they can automatically detect future infringing uploads is itself copyright infringement.
I'm very happy that Scribd has a copy of my book somewhere in their system to automatically detect people uploading it when they shouldn't. The last thing I'd want is for them to remove it and then not know how to stop people uploading it again.
In fact, I'd be willing to sign a copyright assignment form allowing them to hold the text for this specific purpose.
> once the publisher complained and it's now gone.
There's something to be said for not having to chase after people to keep them from ripping you off, though.
> I'm very happy that there are ways to limit it, but the genie is out of the bottle for digital content and the answer is not suing Scribd.
I agree with that. Which makes it something of a vexing question.
There's something to be said for not having to chase after people to keep them from ripping you off, though.
Agreed. But The Geek Atlas was ripped off within hours of it becoming available as a PDF and it appeared in a variety of seedy places on the net which would have been near impossible to actually shutdown.
The only real solution is to target the major providers because they'll be the major conduit for bad copies. That's why it was important to go after Scribd quickly.
What can be done is have publishers work with people like Scribd to preemptively upload ways of identifying copyrighted works so that individual authors don't have to police the Internet.
I agree with that. Which makes it something of a vexing question.
I'm not sure it's even a question. People are going to rip off my book and I cannot prevent all infringement. I have to do two things:
1. Concentrate on other streams of revenue around the book (this is vital anyway since I'm not going to make a fortune with it even if there was no infringement at all).
2. Make sure that major infringements are dealt with quickly.
Of course, I hope you'll go out and buy it, or the e-version, or read it on Safari, but there will be some people who decide to download it from some bad site. Now, I wonder what percentage of those people actually read it.
The 'vexing question' is how to appropriately balance things so that people still have an incentive to create content.
BTW, I'd be happier to buy a copy myself if there were more sites in Italy. Between da Vinci, Galileo and so on and so forth (and don't forget the Greeks in Sicily or the Romans) there are quite a few interesting places to visit!
Well, some people seem to think that content isn't worth anything and people won't pay for it:
http://paulgraham.com/publishing.html
> It annoys me greatly when I see people can read my book for free somewhere because I don't get paid.
Do you object to public libraries?
No, and especially not in Europe where I get paid when people take my book out of the library :-)
http://www.plr.uk.com/
But even without that I don't have an objection to libraries because they do not copy my book, they simply lend it.
Interesting. Why is the copy vs lend distinction important to you? Surely in both cases someone is reading your book for free?
Cory Doctorow wants to have a word with you. :)
What does "the genie is out of the bottle" mean? Does it mean: it is now possible to do X.
If that is the case, then the "genie" has been out of the bottle to do a variety of criminal activities for the duration of this last recorded leg of human civilization.
Isn't the whole point of having an enforced civil order to whack the hand that reaches for the bottle?
The plaintiff's points were quite clear and reasonable.
"In fact, I'd be willing to sign a copyright assignment form allowing them to hold the text for this specific purpose."
Sounds like 'the olive oil' business model.
http://www.superchefblog.com/images/marlonbrando_godfather.p...
What does "the genie is out of the bottle" mean?
What I meant was that since digital content is trivially copyable and since DRM is circumventable we have to learn to live in a world where anything that can be digital is likely to be copied.
Sounds like 'the olive oil' business model.
I'll have to ask you to explain that since I have not seen The Godfather.
I understood that, but don't accept the premise of the "digital" changes the world (in this context). Can you imagine a business selling bootleg (hard) copies of text books opening shop in a university town? What's so hard about making paper copies? Sell it at a bit over copying cost and you'd still be underselling the legitimate publisher by a huge margin. Where would the students buy their books?
The fact that the content is in "digital" even makes checking for notices of copyrights that much more trivial. We're all geeks here, so lets be honest:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/15490856/Java-Pocket-Guide-by-ORei...
"Copyright (c) 2008 Robert Liguori and Patricia Liguori. All rights reserved."
If you are taking a digital format and converting it to the scribd format, how trivial is it for you to write a function that greps for the "Copyright" and "all rights reserved" phrases in the text?
The Olive Oil business: (A protection racket. Organized crime. etc.)
I hope she gets her pound of flesh.
Your Scribd example is a bad one because that's an example of O'Reilly putting a sample of that book on Scribd to tempt people to buy the real thing.
Basically, I think she's going to have a really hard time proving any harm. She says her book was downloaded 100 times. Now prove that that equals 100 lost sales, or X lost sales for any value of X.
My assumption is that if my book was downloaded from Scribd 100 times that I've lost way less than 100 sales (if any) which at royalty rates on a book means I might have lost a couple of dollars. For that reason I wouldn't sue Scribd.