Could one of the worst enablers of digital infringement be turning a new leaf? I hope so, but the jury is out, and they’re still on my naughty list until further notice.

The New York Times is reporting that Scribd is enabling a payment feature for authors and publishers who opt in. This is of course a good thing; it’s always welcome when rightsholders have more voluntary legal options for distribution. And there’s no doubt Scribd has an audience, although it’s an audience used to getting everything for free.

[Editor's note: I have been contacted by a Scribd executive who claims anyone can upload their copyrighted work into Scribd's database and thus have Scribd automatically seek to block infringed works. I'm not familiar with how the technology works so I can't speak to its efficiency, and this of course raises the same problems YouTube and others have raised, namely that authors have to risk sharing digitized versions of their works with a third party they are not contractually partnered with, but it is a start, and hats off to Scribd for this. I need to know more to take them off of the naughty list, but I've got my eraser ready and I'm hoping I can use it. See Scribd's site for more details. I'm leaving the rest of the post below because it accurately conveys my feelings on the subject.]

So why my reservation? The site will continue to enable infringement for any author or publisher not playing ball. [Editor's note 2: This conclusion was based on the Times article.] My criticism of their enablement of infringement and dismissal of authors remains.

For some reason, folks out there with more time than money are scanning entire books — ones over which they possess no rights — and posting them to Scribd for all to download. It’s the book equivalent of Limewire or BitTorrent, essentially. Send a DMCA notice-and-takedown and Scribd will remove the infringing work — actually, I’m told they do it fairly quickly — but like the whack-a-mole I’ve called it before, an infringer quickly reposts the work.

Now Scribd is creating a database of copyrighted works, a database that could be matched to uploads to block infringing posts. The catch? They will only accept into the database works the author or publisher has agreed to sell on the site.

This obviously has nothing to do with creators’ rights. It has everything to do with Scribd ensuring it can increase sales by eliminating free competition on its site. This is obviously in Scribd’s self-interest, but why can’t the venture add to its legitimacy, and potentially win over major publishers and authors (it has none in the program yet) by expanding that database?

Scribd should take a submission for its database from any rightsholder, whether they participate or not. What would be the objection? Books are a fraction of the data of an audiovisual work, and while tens of thousands of books are published each year, not that many would be submitted, and it likely pales in comparison to the number of copyrighted audiovisual and recorded music works produced each year.

There would be some human resources and server costs involved with expanding the database. So charge a processing and storage fee, say $1.* I think a rightsholder would pay that to protect against infringement, although they would be reasonable if they felt it was extortion to pay someone else to not infringe them.

It’s not clear to me to what extent an author or publisher can set the fee for their work. If there is no limit, I have a suggestion to rightsholders. If you’re not yet willing to trust Scribd as a commercial partner or feel more comfortable with, say Amazon’s Kindle technology, go ahead and strike a deal with Scribd, but charge $100 per book. This will get you into their copyright protection system but not cannibalize your existing distribution streams. Then, over time, if Scribd seems another valid distribution source, reduce your fee to something that a consumer would actually pay.

* Where did my $1 rate come from? Out of my head. But can’t I do that? For years I’ve been hearing from those who want to impose a collective licensing regime on creative works, from music to motion pictures to videogames, and it would be funded by a $5 per month tax on ISPs. Where did the $5 figure come from? Out of someone’s head. It was a guess at what people would be willing to pay. But it in no way reflects what would compare in revenues to creators when contrasted with what a functioning market would bring. When I raise this, I’m told to be quiet, because a penny or two per creator is better than the zero pennies they’re getting from the current infringement. So by that logic, I think $1 is about right for authors to pay. Scribd shouldn’t try to figure out if that covers their costs, because it’s better than nothing.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 9:43 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under copyright opponents, internet, licensing, market forces, p2p, piracy, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.