Sci-fi writer Jerry Pournelle: Scribd.com deserved a DMCA takedown notice
“Scribd.com which Doctorow defends has the complete text of a number of works. One of them is Sheffield and Pournelle, Higher Education. I guarantee you that neither I nor Charlie’s widow has given this outfit any permission to do this. They used to have more of my books, and Niven’s, and many others. They also had a series of hoops one had to jump through to get those taken down. The procedure was onerous, and they didn’t answer my emails.” - Sci-fi writer Jerry Pournelle, in justifying the DMCA takedown notice that SFWA used against Scribd. (links added).
Details: Also go here, here and here for more from Pournelle and here for comments from an EFF lawyer representing Scribd. Thanks to Brian Lockwood for the Pournelle pointer.
The TeleRead take: The SFWA shouldn’t have ensnared the work of Cory Doctorow and others who wanted their works spread around—it needed to use greater care in identifying genuinely infringing items and ascertaining the intent of the writers. But Pournelle has a point, too, if he is correct about “onerous” requirements and if Scrib ignored his e-mails. That said, Scribd’s page on copyright matters, as it exists now, seems reasonable. What’s wrong with requiring DMCA invokers to show they represent the people and works in question? Yes, that’s a hassle, but so is being the target of a takedown notice.
September 8th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Does Pournelle really have a point? He makes a lot of unsupported assertions and ad hominems in a poorly written piece.
For example, he claims that Doctorow’s claims about the DMCA aren’t matched by reality, but Pournelle clearly has no idea what he’s talking about and the SFWA’s action to temporarily disband the committee responsible for this nonsense action speaks volumes about whether Pournelle or Doctorow was correct about the take down notices sent to Scrib.
Specifically, Pournelle is a raging hypocrite who is outraged at infringements upon his rights, but cavalier about the infringements upon others,
“The sites in question had thousands of copyrighted works and deliberately made it difficult for the copyright owner even to request that they take them down. SFWA has a couple of volunteers to work on their behalf. Dr. Burt used some software tools to compile a list. The list apparently included some works that the sites had permission to post. When that was called to his attention the objections to those items were removed.
The worst that happened was that for a couple of days some of Corey Doctorow’s work was not available for download from those sites; that is presuming that the site actually took them down at all. ”
Frankly, that’s just outrageous special pleading, especially given the serious nature of a DMCA notice.
January 27th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I love scribd, and i get so many things out of it To hell with Pournelle!