[startingup]

I will be charitable here (you can tell I am not a huge fan either!). I have seen a couple of people use the site, and they use it to publish short stories and such. They could always post it to a blog, but I think Scribd gives them nice search engine optimization. Even for this legitimate use case, the flash player is a bit of a turn-off for me.

But the reason I am not a huge fan is the sheer extent of copyright abuse going on there. Turning a blind eye to it - hiding behind DMCA really - is not kosher, and I frankly wouldn't want to do business that way, no matter what the profit.

[captainobvious]

Guess you are anti-ISP too?

[startingup]

Exactly the response I meant by "hiding behind the DMCA". To call Scribd an ISP is a stretch. They pretty much invite anyone to upload anything, and it is not clear they take any step to take out copyrighted content (entire books can be found there) until someone sends a DMCA notice. An ISP is a transmission service, while Scribd is a stateful, long lasting, very search-engine optimized storage service. An ISP doesn't by design intent (SEO!) carry traffic to copyright infringing content. Some day a distinction like that could come back and bite them in the ass, but their hope must be to "exit" before that happens.