Harvard University Press to go online with Scribd
By Paul Biba
This is from The Chronicle’s Wired Campus Newsletter. I tried to link to The Chronicle site but it seems to be down right now. For the full article check here later.
… the Harvard University Press created its own Scribd profile, and the press has already posted hundreds of works for download. “We can’t spend all of our time chasing down every single pirated copy of a book that’s put up, and it’s not a good use of our time,” said Daniel Lee, director of digital content for the Harvard University Press. “We’d rather participate voluntarily, I think, in a good-faith effort among our partners and with Scribd and sort of fight against it. We’re cognizant of the proliferation of piracy online.”
The university is not the first to begin offering content on the Web site — New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have about a dozen articles on their Scribd pages. What differentiates Harvard from the others, though, is that Harvard is charging for its content — and charging the same price as a hard-copy of the same material would cost.
“I’d be surprised if, with the same pricing model, people will be willing to pay for content that can only be viewed online,” Mr. Lee said. He said interest might increase in publishing the material online if Scribd were to develop a way for the books to become portable. Materials downloaded through Scribd can only be viewed through the site’s software, and cannot be printed or replicated. “If we allow the content to be downloaded with no restrictions, it could eat into our print sales.”
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
This is one of those very-interesting consequences of the way Scribd has set up its anti-piracy efforts. They compare submissions to their own database. By putting their works into the Scribd database, Harvard Press gives Scribd what it needs to block illicit copies from being uploaded.
Harvard blocks one avenue of ‘piracy’ and Scribd gets to claim both these books as in their catalog, and the prestige of the hallowed Harvard name. Not a bad trade-off.
Indeed, with ‘flexible pricing’ would it be inconceivable for anti-ebook publishers and authors to put their works on Scribd with list prices of $5,000 or more, just to block the illicit uploads?