Slashdot Mirror
Scribd Becomes a DRM-Optional E-Bookstore
Miracle Jones writes "In an effort to compete with Amazon and Google, the document-hosting website Scribd will now be letting writers and publishers sell documents that they upload. They will be offering an 80/20 profit-sharing deal in favor of writers. Writers will be able to charge whatever they want. In addition, Scribd will not force any content control (although they will have a piracy database and bounce copyrighted scans) and will let writers choose to encrypt their books with DRM or not. This is big news for people in publishing, who have been seeking an alternative to Amazon for fear that Amazon is amassing too much power too quickly in this brand-new marketplace, especially after Amazon's announcement last week that they will now be publishing books as well as selling them."
I use Wolfram Alpha. At least for segments of 2001:A Space Odyssey....
Will the money actually go to the rights-holders, and not just whoever uploaded it?
Now can you kindly get out of my search results? When I am looking for technical resources on-line, I don't want your stinking eBook. Focus your SEO on people who want your product.
Seriously. In the past month, they've been coming up more often and just getting in the way of useful info. I click on the link from Google because it looks like the info I want. Then I get this silly flash app that slows my computer down. The content in that app may well have relevant info, but that's not how I care to consume it when I am looking up references.
They've really cheapened themselves in my mind. This was my first impression of them. SEO Scum. Now when I see that they actually have an interesting product, I'm soured on them. Kudo's for taking on the Giant in the e-book space. Shame on you for littering the Web.
Is it just me, or is Scribd super annoying? Often this happens to me: I'm searching for information about something. I'm clicking through Google links trying to figure out the answer to my question. I click on a promising-looking link, and then I end up on a screwed-up looking site that's basically totally unreadable. I've learned to recognize such piles of crap as scribd documents.
There's a tiny little text box taking up like 6 cm by 5 cm of space with a scrollbar... I have multiple monitors, huge space on my desktop, and they're cramming all the content into this tiny little unreadable scrollable space. After a while I figured out that I could click a couple times and turn the content into something that was somewhat usable. But generally when a search puts me into a scribd document, I just hit the back button and look elsewhere. Only in a fit of pure desperation will I return to the scribd content, but usually I don't have to.
Am I alone in feeling this way? perhaps I'm hopelessly backwards or something, but scribd annoys me greatly.
Publishers just need to boycott Amazon if they don't want to be swallowed alive whole. Look at Walmart, who regularly forces it's will on suppliers and companies whose products they sell.
It seems like it will be a hard choice for content owners to decide which to choose.
Those with strong opinions about copyright will choose based on their beliefs, but what about those who don't have strong beliefs? Will they choose to try to protect their work technically? Or will they choose to be more open.
It's going to be interesting to see.
The Fiction Circus article linked to from the slashdot summary isn't as good as the NY Times article that it links to.
No, not really. One reason it's not big news is that scribd is currently too small a commercial entity to make any difference in this big marketplace. Another reason it's not big news is that other people are already selling digital books without DRM. Fictionwise and Baen are two examples that come to mind.
Well, no. Amazon is a huge, profitable business that readers know about. Scribd isn't. That's a pretty strong incentive for writers to deal with Amazon -- or, more accurately, it's a pretty strong incentive for their publishers to. The author generally doesn't make any decisions about the distribution channels through which a book gets to the public.
Find free books.
Scribd? Are those guys the complete fucking morons that managed to turn what are pretty much normal PDFs into nigh-unreadable embedded flash monstrosities for no conceivable reason? Those guys?
I can sympathize with the video guys who went flash. Until HTML 5 finally lurches its way into ubiquity, it is pretty much the best option. But text? The stuff that the internet has been carrying just fine thanks since it was an ARPA project? WTF?
Now everyone has a vanity press and considering Sturgeon's Law already applies to commercially-published books, I think it will have to be revised four percentage points. Thanks, internet.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
i wish google would have an option to filter the scribd bullshit... whenever i see it start loading on a search result ive clicked on, I IMMEDIATELY hit the "back" button.. Its the biggest pain in the ass site with mostly useless information.
goto hell scribd..
thankyew.
-db
"Sorry, purchasing documents on Scribd is only available from within the United States"
Lost me right there.
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Scribd and twitter, both from the web2.0 trend are not innovative technologies and there is very little need for such apps.
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I don't know about you, but I didn't spend 6 years on a novel to piss it away on a free site. Anybody can do that. The standard of excellence will still remain publication by a major.
Scribd sucks. every time I've seen a link to it, it seems like it's trying to be as crippled and useless as possible. The whole site seems to operate on "allow users to upload someone else's copyrighted work, display it to people in such a useless fashion that any copyright holder who might complain would assume it's some officially sanctioned DRM-loaded crapware"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I assume they qualify for the DMCA safe harbor provisions - but so did YouTube and they were sued by Viacom and settled out of court.
To be a competitor to Amazon people will have to have heard about it and I reckon most Kindle owners aren't even aware of a world outside of the Amazon store.
Lulu and similar are the real competitors and I doubt they're too worried.
Just use flashblock to block that annoying PDF-reader-from-hell they embed in their pages and click the PDF link above the (now inactive) flash thingy. That way you can gain access to whatever they have to offer without having to suffer their misguided attempt at making it 'easy' to access it. Use Evince or gv or whatever to read the PDF (or a usable alternative if you're on an OS which is not supported by these, eg. Windows) and stay clear of Adobe's attempt to take over your computer.
In other words, navigating the web is like navigating a log-studded, crocodile- and parasite-infested river. Guide your canoe around the obstacles using the paddle you know and trust and you'll get where you want without any nasty surprises...
--frank[at]unternet.org
"Sorry, purchasing documents--"
Lost me right there.
And I sure as hell didn't put it there.
Will see what the takedown procedure it tonight
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