A whole bunch of authors, among them JK Rowling, Aravind Adiga and Ken Follett, are up in arms over the fact that their books appear on "social publishing site" Scribd.com, and can be read for free. Readers can also download the text and edit it as they see fit.The text was probably scanned in an entered manually, because the titles involved have not yet appeared as legitimate e-books. (Though the message here is plain - e-books need to be made available much more quickly.)
The company says it is prepared to immediately remove copyrighted material when they receive notice from the copyright holder, but says that it relies on the community policing itself.
Nevertheless, internet piracy is one more thing for authors and publishers to worry about, and is a problem that isn't going to go away. No longer does copyright actually protect you before your material is ripped off.
Some publishers though, are using Srcibd to post first chapters of books they are promoting.
