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CS files copy­right-in­fringe­ment class ac­tion against Scribd, the Nap­ster of books

September 18, 2009

Scribd is a web site that pub­lishes books sub­mit­ted by users and makes these books avail­able to users to down­load. Among the books that Scribd pub­lishes are many books that are un­der copy­right but that have been sub­mit­ted to Scribd without any li­cense or per­mis­sion from the copy­right hold­er. With re­spect to these works — which com­prise a large part of the most pop­u­lar works avail­able on Scribd — Scribd is en­gaged in flag­rant copy­right in­fringe­ment and in fa­cil­it­at­ing the copy­right in­fringe­ment of its users.

Scribd makes money in large part through ad­vert­ising: it uses the copy­righted works that it pub­lishes on its site to drive traffic to that site, where it dis­plays ads tar­geted based on the con­tent of the copy­righted works that a user re­quests. This ad­vert­ising rev­en­ue is the dir­ect res­ult of Scribd’s pir­acy of coprighted works. Scribd’s in­vestors in­clude Paul Gra­ham’s Y Com­bin­at­or, Red­point Ven­tures, The Kin­sey Hills Group, and Charles River Ven­tures.

Elaine Scott, a Hou­s­ton-based au­thor of award-win­ning chil­drens’ books, has en­gaged Ca­mara & Sib­ley to file suit against Scribd on be­half of her­self and all oth­er au­thors’ whose copy­righted works have been ad­ded to Scribd’s data­base without their per­mis­sion. Read a copy of the suit on Scribd here.

K.A.D. Ca­mara will serve as lead coun­sel for the plaintiffs. Read cov­er­age in the UK Guard­i­an here.