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Scribd raises $9M in Series B, hires Bebo COO, and new marketing VP

techcrunch.com

33 pointsjasonbentley17 comments

Love the site, but they seriously need to clean up the amount of illegal ebooks being shared.

I mean, http://www.scribd.com/search?query=wrox&x=0&y=0 says it all doesn’t it.

Wouldn’t even be hard to filter this out, anything uploaded over 200 pages should be investigated.

Ofcourse, much of their growth may come from these illegal downloads (we don't know)... So until they start getting complains, they'll probably let it slide: the youtube way.

Edit: what the... I posted this comment on techcrunch a few hours ago, and now I recheck the search results, all 600+ ebooks seem to have disappeared.

No matter, just search for something else. Plenty of examples still. Seems they deleted this quickly perhaps because of the comment, but are not addressing it globally.

They probably qualify for the DMCA safe harbor so one of the few incentives to act are complaints. Also, one can assume they are getting complaints given the volume of documents they host.

Ha, it's zero docs, but it still says 658 up in the tab. It's a cat-and-mouse game and I certainly don't envy them.

Congrats fellas and ladies!

I imagine it's exactly the youtube way. Bootstrapping from illicit content to legitimate content. scribd is probably the second biggest repository of illegal books online (after irc book bots) and probably the easiest to use.

The only reason I've ever used scribd is to get illegal computer books. About 1/2 of which I already owned physical copies of.

Somehow this query still works: http://www.scribd.com/search?l=0&page=1&per_page=100...

Those seem like entirely different results though. Seems all books with "wrox" in the title are deleted.

If you want another example, you can try "harry potter" or "sitepoint".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Copyright_Infringement_L...

"not be aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent (512(c)(1)(A)(2))."

"not receive a financial benefit directly attributable to the infringing activity, in a case in which the service provider has the right and ability to control such activity (512(c)(1)(B))."

Your good intentions are well appreciated, but Scribd is the only site of its kind with a working copyright filter that has to check every single document uploaded against literally tens of thousands of document “thumbprints.” If you had any idea of the amount of content that is blocked, you would take a less condescending attitude toward the uphill battle we fight against illegal activity.

There are literally hundreds of copies of Stephenie Meyer books (”Twilight”, etc) that are blocked EVERY DAY, same with Harry Potter, dummies books, etc.

Sure, someone’s going to run a query and find an exception and will post their ‘gotchas’ here. And yes, everyone has an opinion about what Scribd should be doing to combat infringing users. And someone will upload a copyrighted book, and will post their “See?! They STEAL!!” comments before the copyright filter finds it. They always do.

But the fact is Scribd is doing far more than any of our competitors in this area. We have a far more responsive and effective copyright policy than any of our competitors. As a result, Scribd has more deals with major publishers than any of our competitors.

Actually I can't stand to read documents on Scribd. I would much rather just gave the PDF to view instead on an in-browser type of thing. In fact I am looking into removing it from all my searches because it's gotten to the point of me just closing the tab when u realize it's a Scribd page. :/

What's wrong with the flash viewer? I've rarely had any problems with it, and it loads document fairly quickly.

Because integrating the document into a page is annoying - in order to fit other content such as ads, the main viewing window is restricted to an unreasonable size. I'd much rather have it open up a document in the full screen.

Plus there's a certain senselessness to distributing documents this way when everyone is already happy using a pefectly capable, open file format that every machine can read as it is, not to mention tying the existence of said documents down to the survival of a single company.

They need to seriously get rid of that flash viewer or at least provide a link to a real pdf.

You need to register, then they provide you with the option of downloading the PDF.

Ah, ok. Thanks.

This could be made more obvious.

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