Reception[edit]

Accusations of copyright infringement[edit]

Scribd has been accused of copyright infringement. In 2007, one year after its inception, Scribd was
served with 25 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices.[61] In March 2009,
The Guardian writes, "Harry Potter author [J.K. Rowling] is among writers shocked to discover their
books available as free downloads. Neil Blair, Rowling’s lawyer, said the Harry Potter downloads
were 'unauthorised and unlawful'...Rowling's novels aren't the only ones to be available from Scribd.
A quick search throws up novels from Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Jeffrey Archer, Ken
Follett, Philippa Gregory, and J.R.R. Tolkien."[62] In September 2009, American author Elaine Scott
alleged that Scribd "shamelessly profits from the stolen copyrighted works of innumerable authors".
[63]
 Her attorneys sought class action status in their efforts to win damages from Scribd for allegedly
"egregious copyright infringement" and accused it of calculated copyright infringement for profit. [64][65]
[66]
 The suit was dropped in July 2010. [67][68]

Controversies[edit]
In March 2009, the passwords of several Comcast customers were leaked on Scribd. The
passwords were later removed when the news was published by The New York Times.[69][70][71]
In July 2010, Gigaom reported that the script of The Social Network (2010) movie was uploaded and
leaked on Scribd; it was promptly taken down per Sony's DMCA request.[72]
Following a decision of the Istanbul 12th Criminal Court of Peace, dated March 8, 2013, access to
Scribd is blocked for Internet users in Turkey.[73]
In July 2014, Scribd was sued by Disability Rights Advocates (represented by Haben Girma), on
behalf of the National Federation of the Blind and a blind Vermont resident, for allegedly failing to
provide access to blind readers, in violation of the Americans with Disability Act.[74] Scribd moved to
dismiss, arguing that the ADA only applied to physical locations. In March 2015, the U.S. District
Court of Vermont ruled that the ADA covered online businesses as well. A settlement agreement
was reached, with Scribd agreeing to provide content accessible to blind readers by the end of 2017.
[75]

BookID[edit]
To counteract the uploading of unauthorized content, Scribd created BookID, an automated
copyright protection system that helps authors and publishers identify unauthorized use of their
works on Scribd.[76] This technology works by analyzing documents for semantic data, metadata,
images, and other elements and creates an encoded "fingerprint" of the copyrighted work. [77]