Scribd Comes Out Against SOPA By Making Documents Disappear
from the good-for-them dept
One of the more interesting things about what’s happening as the tech and startup world recognizes just how ridiculous SOPA and PROTECT IP are, is that many tech companies are coming up with their own unique and interesting ways to make their users aware of it. Tumblr blacked out its dashboard. Reddit set up a SOPA subreddit and has publicly advocated against the bill. Etsy alerted all of its users to the threat of SOPA on Etsy (multiple times). The latest interesting one, as noted by Alex Howard, is that Scribd has officially come out against the bill and is doing so by making text from various documents (including the analysis from famed Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe about how SOPA & PIPA violate the First Amendment) disappear before your eyes, before asking you to call Congress.
Filed Under: pipa, protect ip, sopa
Companies: scribd
Comments on “Scribd Comes Out Against SOPA By Making Documents Disappear”
What happened to Wikipedia and their threats of closing it down?
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Perhaps, the threat of closing down credit card donations during their next donation drive.
Just a guess … go SOPA!!!
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Oh and Wikipedia is a bunch of pirates and deserves to be shut down. They have pics from current TV shows!
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They have pics from current TV shows!
What does current have to do with anything?!?
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They’re not over 95+ years old and are hence still protected.
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…unless the pictures are utilised in a way covered by fair use, CC or some other exception/alternative to standard copyright.
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Did some idiot / politician / uniformed thug confuse Wikipedia for Wikileaks? Or is it because Wikipedia links to copyrighted content?
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Referring to the following
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111212/16232517056/wikipedia-considers-blackout-to-protest-sopa.shtml
I was hoping Wikipedia would follow through on their blackout but maybe I missed it?
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A Congressional order prevented Wikipedia from shutting down after many members expressed their concern that if this information were suddenly unavailable, they “would have no way of knowing who they were addressing during legislative proceedings, what exactly a ‘legislative proceeding’ entails, what state exactly they’re supposedly representing or who that guy was that looked so familiar in ‘Knockaround Guys’ (Seth Green).”
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Wales first ran a straw poll to see if it was a popular idea. I read on another site that around 85+% of Wiki users/writers/contributors supported it, now they’re just trying to figure out a way to implement this.
It’s just too bad that they are making documents that would always be legal and without issue disappear. They aren’t giving anyone a realistic impression of what is going on.
Another company that can’t be bothered to know their clients.
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It’s just too bad that you make things up and you’re wrong. You can’t be bothered to check the facts. Another shill that prefers money over truth.
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SOPA is targeted at full websites, not individual documents on websites (which is covered by the DMCA). If the site goes down, all documents, legal or otherwise, go down with it.
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“They aren’t giving anyone a realistic impression of what is going on.”
Yes, we get it. Anyone who disagrees with you has to be either brainwashed or misled. only you have the truth, even though you won’t explain what’s wrong. We get it.
At a rough guess, they’re coming out because they’ve already been the target of questionable lawsuits and other attempts to take them down despite doing nothing wrong.
Example: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/scribd-defense/
“Another company that can’t be bothered to know their clients.”
Oh, they know their clients alright. They also know the dangers that unfounded attacks would cause them under SOPA, hence the problems.
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Yes, and their lawyers have probably also explained to them how they can all end up being very, very rich if an unfounded attack comes in.
Sorry Paul, but your whining doesn’t fly.
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If by very rich, you mean “out of business” then yes.
You saw the part about intent right?
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“Yes, and their lawyers have probably also explained to them how they can all end up being very, very rich if an unfounded attack comes in.”
[citation needed]
The penalties for filing a bogus takedown are small, I believe they only cover lawyer fees and that’s it (which can’t make a company rich since they had to pay out those lawyer fees, though it can make the lawyers rich so either way the lawyers win), and those penalties pale in comparison to infringement. SOPA supporters have been fighting against increasing the penalties for filing a bogus takedown request. Not to mention, intent is difficult to prove and is required to get only a somewhat better reward.
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(in comparison to infringement penalties).
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“They aren’t giving anyone a realistic impression of what is going on.”
You’re totally right. Under SOPA these sites would be able to publish blacked out dashboards, or only a few spread out words from a doc, because they’d be completely out of business. Thanks for pointing this out.
As long as they’re lying about what the bill does, maybe they could say it kills puppies and kittens too.
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If you read it closely enough it could be used to kill puppies and kittens. What if the kitten was to file a bogus copyright claim and then the massive backlash against such tactics, as boldly and clearly stated in the bill, caused the kittne to commit suicide due to a large settlement being levied against him?
I’d feel so very bad for the kitten.
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Now you’re just phoning your trolling in. Maybe you need a vacation.
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They know exactly what it does, let anyone who wants to take down anything they want to as long as they claim there is a copyright violation (which is not checked by the course)
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As long as you’re lying about the bill then maybe you can say that it will resurrect the dead too.
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Well, the bill could very well kill youtube, which is, as we all know, mainly composed of videos of cats doing “cute” things.
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There are also videos of dogs skating. So, yeah, it kills puppies and kittens.
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This is a very good point. SOPA will kill the internet thereby killing all the LOL cats! Think of the poor cats!
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The bill couldn’t kill YouTube, liar.
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Yes it could, liar!
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And how many times has the DMCA been used to silence critics? I’m fairly certain that no where in bill that created the DMCA did it say one could use the DMCA to silence those that criticize your products, services or speech? But hey, keep your head in the sand.
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You are on to something there, head in a very dark place, though I do not think it is sand he is smelling. The question is who’s cheeks he is kissing, his own, or his bosses?
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is Google doing anything to fight this? seems like little to nothing. They have tons of money…can’t they pay higher bribes to the congress members than the RIAA is?!?
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“can’t they pay higher bribes to the congress members than the RIAA is?!?”
No because google actually uses it’s income to innovate… not litigate.
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Sadly I think Google is not brave enough to really do as much as they should. Could you imagine if everyone who was against this just shut down their webpages even for just a few hours? suddenly no Wikipedia, no Google, and many more suddenly not there. That would wake up the world to this, but these companies fear the loss of that money.
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It would be nice if they did SOMETHING though. SO many people use Google that otherwise are unaware of SOPA or PIPA and they could educated the masses very quickly.