DISQUS

VentureBeat: Scribd, the “YouTube for documents,” copyright violations and all

  • rick gregory · 2 years ago
    Excellent... Let's steal people's content and then say "gee, we can't control what people do."

    Right. Because it was huge surprise, after Napster, Kazaa, etc and Youtube that people would upload content that they have ZERO rights to. I'm just shocked... I'd never have seen that coming. (insert rolling eyes here)

    The underlying technology sounds cool - but it's lazy bordering on criminal to say that Scribd can't screen content as it's uploaded. There are several products that allow teachers to screen student papers for plagiarism. If a teacher sitting at a desk can use software to screen electronically submitted student papers, are we really to believe that a cutting edge company that's the Youtube of documents cannot so this on each and every submission it recieves?

    Please...
  • Paul Graham · 2 years ago
    Could you correct the part that says they got $300k from Y Combinator? We never invest that much. We did a seed round for Scribd, and then they went on to raise $300k from angel investors.
  • Matt Marshall · 2 years ago
    Thanks Paul, corrected.
  • Dave Seth · 2 years ago
    What a silly "startup." Fact is, people don't read as much and reading through some small flash player is just painful. They'll get sued soon. Hope they can raise enough money for their defense fund!
  • la · 2 years ago
    actually, IMO, legal issues aside, this would seem to be the most practical way to distribute any printed material online... could also serve as a great discovery/preview engine for books, manuscripts, course material, etc. not to mention, the content screening process on this type of service is significantly less of a burden than that of a video/music service (you can just do a text match!) - and they can do brilliant contextual advertising w/out relying on flaky tag/name/description data. lastly, considering there's no digital amazon (or at least a mainstream one), I can think of a million opportunities for this company. ok, my fanboy piece is over. cool site :)
  • DA · 2 years ago
    Actually the third founders name is Tikhon "Bernstam" not "Dernstan"
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  • sportsinteraction · 2 years ago
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