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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Im not hugely surprised since I saw the Scribd links appearing automatically next to PDF submissions here on HN.

If they made it that easy to break copyright it was only a matter of time before someone sued.

EDIT: I dont mean to say HN/pg are at fault - I just mean they were providing an API along the lines of scribd.com/scrape?url=[url of the pdf] (which is/was what was used here) which scraped and saved the document. That's just asking for trouble.

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That's just asking for trouble.

Just like Google's cache is?

Ah but Goggle is a big boy with lots of money. It's much easier to pick on a smaller opponent.

On the other hand, you can get a lot of money by shaking down big companies. It depends on what your goals are: winning, or getting money from your win.

The strategy may be in fact to take down a smaller case and use it as a precedent to go after larger companies.

Google cache is a plus.

Also, scribd show ads right next to every content that they don't own.

So do ad-supported web browsers.

People still use ad-supported browsers?

I do, because I like offering web sites I enjoy a chance to make money off me, and because I actually feel slightly empty when I go to a site designed around a Deck ad and don't see it. Tasteful ads make a web site look better.

Web sites are not the same as browsers.

Whoops! My bad.

So does your TV, if you have it switched on next to your laptop.

The real issue is where the content comes from. The browser doesn't provide a document - it's a dumb conduit for the page you're after. Whether you paid for your browser (Windows) or it's ad supported is irrelevant since it is itself incapable of copyright infringement. This isn't true of Scribd.

This isn't true of Scribd.

Why not? It's a PDF reader that you pay to use by looking at ads.

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