Scribd fires back, denies violating copyright

Scribd, an online publishing tool where users share their manuscripts and essays, while others post pirated copies of books, denied that the company encourages copyright infringement.

A lawsuit filed by author Elaine Scott on Friday alleged that Scribd violated Scott's copyright and those belonging to many others. According to a copy of the suit obtained by CNET News, Scott claimed that Scribd "shamelessly profits" from stolen works and "built a technology that's broken barriers to copyright infringement on a global scale."

On Sunday evening, Scribd issued a comment to CNET in response to the suit.

"Ms. Scott's lawsuit is without merit," Scribd said in its statement. "Scribd is an online service provider that complies with--and goes above and beyond--the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Scribd therefore is entitled to the full protection of the DMCA's safe harbor provisions."

By now, anyone following online copyright issues at YouTube, Veoh, Project Playlist, and many other sites knows that the DMCA's safe harbor provision is designed to protect Internet service providers from holding the bag for users who commit illegal acts.

The provision protects sites that meet its requirements. Scott claims Scribd fails to meet the requirements and the company says nonsense.

"Scribd does not want unauthorized content on our site," the company said. "We built the industry's leading (filtering) technology to prevent the upload of unauthorized documents. This is one of the reasons why best-selling authors and many of the world's largest publishers have chosen to put their works on Scribd."

[Sausagebiscuit]

If they take the same steps and measures as Veoh, then I agree that they should be covered under the safe harbor exemption. Besides, the users uploading infringing materials should be the ones getting sued. Nothing more fun than suing your fans to get you some good positive publicity anyway.

[Renegade Knight]

True. For all the gnashing of teeth, I'm not sure the MPAA, RIAA, and Writers and their association equivilent have an equivilent proactive mechancism. Heck if I issued a DMCA takedown to a Book Publisher for alleged palgerism (aka copyright infringment) I'd bet they would give me a big fat "talk to the hand".

[sanenazok]

So this case may be another loss for that lawfirm. Maybe time to wipe those smirks?