Author Drops Copyright Case Against Scribd Filter 81
natehoy writes "Apparently, monitoring for copyright violations is not in itself a copyright violation, lawyers for Elaine Scott decided. As a result, they have dropped the lawsuit against Scribd, who was being simultaneously sued for allowing copies of Scott's work to be published, and retaining an unlicensed copy of the work in their filtering software to try and prevent future copyright violations."
Re:DMCA Safe-harbor sure (Score:2, Informative)
Can you explain how Scribd knowingly made a copy of her work and profited from that copy?
Scribd's users knowingly made copies of her work. Once Scribd was made aware of the infringement, they reacted properly and appropriately to the DMCA notice and implemented a filter to prevent further distribution of the work. So they did not knowingly make the copies that they profited from. Case one for the defendant, DMCA "Safe Harbor" protects them from prosecution since they acted swiftly and appropriately in response to a perfectly valid and reasonable DMCA notice.
Scribd themselves knowingly made one copy of the work, to put it in their filter. No profit was made from that copy, and that copy was made for the sole purpose of benefiting the author. Scribd made no profit from that work, it simply allowed them to protect the author's interests extremely effectively.
Re:A real shame. That was a brilliant business mod (Score:3, Informative)
Abundance has ZERO to do with ownership.
Stealing a blade of grass off my lawn makes you a thief.
Got it?
Now, get off it.
Re:A real shame. That was a brilliant business mod (Score:2, Informative)
Scribd possessed a copy of a book that they did not pay for, and using it as part of a software program.
That's grounds for a lawsuit.
Whether it "saved" the author money is moot. They could have saved the author money by manually examining uploaded content, instead of by using a pirated copy in their software.