Plaintiffs v Scribd
Scribd Sued In Class Action Over Copyright Infringement
The law firm that represented accused file-swapper Jammie Thomas, defended unauthorized Mac clone maker Psystar, and promised to file a class action lawsuit against the RIAA has now sued document sharing site Scribd for "egregious" copyright infringement.
The law firm of Camara & Sibley has decided to take on document-sharing website Scribd in a big way, seeking class action status against the site in a lawsuit filed in a Texas federal court. The charge: like YouTube, Veoh, and other user-generated content sites, Scribd makes it just too easy to upload copyrighted content without permission, and the company should be held liable.
Plaintiff Elaine Scott, a Houston author found her 1985 book Stocks and bonds: profits and losses available for download on Scribd; someone had apparently taken the time to scan the entire thing and upload it to the site. Scott noticed that the book had been downloaded more than 100 times and grew incensed that her copyright was being violated. So she notified Scribd, which takes works down when it receives a DMCA takedown notice (as do all US-based user-generated content sites that hope to stay in business).
But the fact that Scribd would take down the book was beside the point; it shouldn't have been there in the first place. Echoing a view that is common among rightsholders, Scott and her lawyers argue that it simply can't be the case that the onus for protecting copyrighted works falls completely upon the rightsholder. That is, sites like YouTube or Scribd shouldn't be able to host copyrighted works, profiting from them indefinitely until a copyright holder takes notice and asks them to stop. Such a system puts a terrific burden on rightsholders if they want to keep their works off of such sites, especially if someone else can simply upload another copy.
One of the unexpected twists to the complaint is that Scribd has actually developed a copyright protection system. When authors send a takedown letter to the site, Scribd adds the offending document to its system to prevent other people from simply uploading it again. But this itself is another act of copyright infringement, according to Camara; Scribd is copying the text of the book or document in question without permission for use in this system, even though the copyright protection system itself might someday turn out to be worth more money that the document storage side of the business.
Plaintiff's attorneys points out that most court cases have taken place in the Ninth Circuit, which includes San Francisco and Silicon Valley, yet such rulings don't automatically have precedent in Texas, and that the Fifth Circuit might well come to different conclusions. They further argue that Scribd isn't a "service provider" at all, but a publisherwhich would remove the DMCA immunityand also that Scribd makes money directly off of infringing works (by showing ads), which could also threaten safe harbor protection.
For more information please contact:
Camara & Sibley
2339 University Boulevard
Houston, Texas
Main: 713-893-7973
Fax: 713-583-1131
