Intellectual Property Law

Scribd Cries Foul on Unusual Infringement Lawsuit

By David Kravets

Scribd, a document hosting service, defended itself Tuesday against charges that its copyright filtering system commits infringement. If true, it would debunk a key allegation of the case.

The novel lawsuit, filed by a children’s author in Texas last Friday, maintains that Scribd unlawfully copies the text of books and other publications to compare new uploads against the copyrighted work and to block those files from its server.

But Michelle Laird, a spokeswoman for the 2-year-old San Francisco startup, denied the allegations. In an interview with Threat Level, she said Scribd does not make any copies of the original work. Instead, the company creates a digital fingerprint, or a “hash,” to identify infringing copies.

“If someone tries to upload a document that matches one of the digital fingerprints, the upload is automatically removed,” said Laird. “Scribd does not store copies of readable text in our copyright management system,” she said — only the digital fingerprint.

As described on Scribd’s website, content uploaded to Scribd’s paid section is automatically fingerprinted and placed in the filter, so that unauthorized copies uploaded by others can be blocked. Scribd also takes fingerprints of uploaded works when it receives a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, so it can block repeat uploads of the document.

That description is at odds with the claims in the lawsuit, which alleges “Scribd illegally copies the work into its copyright protection system, without permission or compensation to the author.” The suit maintains that the copying and insertion of a copyrighted work into a filtering system without compensating the copyright holder, or obtaining the proper consent, is a violation of the Copyright Act.

Fred von Lohmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation copyright attorney, said even if Scribd copied and stored a complete copy of copyrighted works into its filters, that act likely would be a protected fair use of the material.

The case was brought by children?s writer Elaine Scott, whose 1985 Stocks and Bonds was hosted at Scribd and downloaded about 100 times, according to the suit. She sent the company a takedown notice, then sued. The lawyer pressing the case is Kiwi Camara, the Houston attorney best known for representing Jammie Thomas-Rasset last summer in a file-sharing lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America. Camara lost that case, and Thomas-Rasset was hit with a $1.92 million judgment for sharing 24 songs online.

In an interview, Camara said through the discovery process, “We hope to learn details of their system.”

Details aside, Camara speculated that Scribd is likely to license its filtering technology that includes an undisclosed number of digital fingerprinted works. That such filters are good for copyright owners is beside the point, he said.

“In a couple of years of developing this, Scribd might turn around and license it,” he said. “The profits generated from that should be shared.”

Laird said “Scribd does not profit nor intend to profit from content” placed in its copyright filters.

See Also:

• Google Lawyer: Copyright Filter ?Hopefully? Installed By September …
• U2 Manager Wants ISPs to Filter File Sharers; Threat Level Calls …
• Music Label’s Copyright Argument is Rubbish
• New Lobbying Group Calls for Internet Filtering
• War on File Sharer Following War on Terror
• YouTube’s New Filter Makes Piracy Profitable ? for Google …
• Big, Small Media Create Colluding Copyright Cartel

Full post as published by Threat Level on September 22, 2009 (boomark / email).