Scribd.com Comes to the Dark Side
Wednesday, September 1 By Andrew Shaffer I thought I had figured out every conceivable way to squeeze money out of authors...until I saw this post yesterday from Paperback Writer:
[As of July 27th] Scribd.com has begun charging people to download my free e-books hosted on their site. They are using an archive subscription scam to make their money (this also neatly avoids them having to pay me any royalties on the profits they make.)
Evidently all the money they've been raking in from the Google ads they've posted on my e-book pages hasn't been enough for them.... I was not made aware of this new policy by Scribd at all; a reader kindly brought it to my attention. If you have free stories or documents hosted on this site, chances are they're doing the same to you.
Yik
es! And you thought that Evil Wylie was evil! Charging readers to access free e-books and other documents WITHOUT NOTIFYING THE AUTHORS?! I wish I had thought of this scam legitimate business venture first.
Their "archive" scheme process works like this: after an unspecified "period of time," all free, publicly-viewable documents posted to Scribd.com are retired to an archive. To download those documents, readers who visit Scribd.com must cough up either $5 for a 24-hour downloading period or $9 for a monthly subscription. Simply viewing archived documents does not require payment.
Scribd.com offers an option to return the document to the free "current" section AFTER it has been archived. In an absolutely brilliant move, however, their terms of service don't actually state when documents will be archived...so authors have no easy way to determine when their work will be archived (and thus available for un-archiving).
According to Scribd.com, "The Scribd Archive is.... an acknowledgement of the importance of the combined scholarship and imagination of so many people [i.e. the authors who have used our service]." Thank you for acknowledging the importance of the writers who created the work that you are now pimping like street meat distributing.
Final thoughts, straight from the Scribd.com general terms of use: "You hereby grant Scribd a worldwide license.... to exploit Your User Content."
Reader Comments (15)
To exploit, make money, and we'll make you jump through hoops to get it down AND while you're jumping thru hoops......
O.o
I love the distributed idea of pushing my content anywhere and everywhere that wants it. But, this is an unfortunately good example of how you have to be careful with whom you entrust your content.
Though I still endorse a liberal attitude of sharing content, as many places as possible, I'm definitely removing Scribd from that list.
UPDATE! Evil Wylie contacted Scribd and successfully negotiated a resolution. Scribd now offers the option for an author to PERMANENTLY OPT ALL DOCUMENTS OUT of the "archives." This is effective immediately. This doesn't mean that what they did was right (although their terms and conditions allow them to basically do whatever), but they do respond to complaints rather swiftly.
Thanks for letting authors know about opting out of the Scribd archives. I've had nothing but incredible experiences on Scribd, so it's been disheartening to read the disgruntled words of other users.
Offering opt-out is insanely lame. They already have a business built primarily on stolen content that the authors haven't noticed was stolen yet, and now you have to opt out of them charging people money to view your content. Fuck Scribd.
Scribd is run by immoral assholes, and every time I think they can't get worse, they prove me wrong.
Fuck them. Here's to hoping somebody with some money decides to fuck off with the DMCA complaints and just sues the living shit out of the worthless, unethical, value-stealing founders of that awful, awful website.
Posting anonymously because those WORTHLESS SACKS OF SHIT host pirated versions of my content, force me to go and find it, are lousy at noting dupe re-uploads, and have engineered their entire system to remain within the letter of the law whilst profiting from piracy. Fuck them. Fuck them in their tiny, worthless, talent-free assholes.
[So you're saying you're not a fan? ;) -- Evil Wylie]
Hyla: what "incredible" experiences did you have? To be frank, I don't believe you.
I have trouble believing that Scribd has done anything good for anybody, given that they host fucktons of obviously pirated content and clearly don't care.
Which Scribd employee are you, Hyla? Because no intelligent human being could possibly look at Scribd and see a thing of value. It's just a place run by criminals.
I think you might need to publish their responce/your new blog entry, I can't view it.
[Their response is located here now on the HuffPost--the address of the URL may have changed. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tammy-h-nam/shedding-light-on-scribd-_1_b_702788.html -- Evil Wylie]
I just signed up for Scribd before reading this. Damn.
[See the updated post on Scribd's response. -- Evil Wylie]
FS, that's funny. I'm not a Scribd employee, just a writer, photographer, widow, wife, mommy of four, who began uploading documents there four months ago, in hopes of gaining more interest in my forthcoming memoir, Drop Dead Life: A Pregnant Widow's Heartfelt and Often Comic Journey through Death, Birth, and Rebirth.
For me, Sribd has been an awesome way of building my platform and an unbelievably supportive writing community. Before I started uploading documents on Scribd--ones which could be pirated from my website--I had several agents interested in my book, all of whom said I needed to grow my readership. That's what Scribd has done for me. 45,000 reads in four months.
No, I do not agree with the way in which this archiving situation was handled, but I hope Scribd can sort it out, so that other unknown authors will see the value in the site's tremendous ability to connect readers to their work.
Hyla, no real agent will take you on if you have content on Scribds. Facebook os the only "platform" they respect.
SCIBD is a criminal enterprise IMHO
Ryan, I'm a huge fan of Facebook, although they've obviously had issues in the past, like many online communities. Ironically, because of an interview I had with Jane Friedman on the Writer's Digest Blog, which chronicles my experience on Scribd, I've been contacted directly by editors from two of the biggest publishing houses, both with interest in my memoir. Never would I have been contacted directly by those editors if I hadn't accumulated readers on Scribd. So, you can imagine why I hope Scribd can make ammends and move forward.
FS, the notion that it is possible to steal an integer is absurd and laughable.
@ FS -- While I would obviously love to believe that Scribd is run by criminals, it is, like any other corporation or enterprise, run by humans. And humans make mistakes (yes, sometimes criminal mistakes, I suppose). Since the archive program was a "beta" test, according to Scribd, it's difficult to determine whether this was really part of their longterm strategy or whether the "right" people there weren't paying attention to the way the archive system was implemented.
@ Hyla -- Thanks for sharing your experience.
@Evil - my pleasure to share. Thank you for stimulating conversation.