Free Solution Lets Publishers Block Copyright Violations

Scribd, the leader in online document sharing and publishing, wants to work with publishers through its Qualified Publisher Program (QPP). The program offers a variety of premium features and enables publishers to proactively fight piracy by providing control over the distribution and viewing of their copyrighted materials.

Scribd's new QPP works in conjunction with copyright holders and automatically blocks uploads of the copyrighted content by non-rights holders. Scribd uses its new Text Matching System (TMS) to compare documents that users upload against those contributed to the filter by copyright holders. Attempts to upload content identified as copyrighted and deemed to be infringing are automatically stopped by Scribd's TMS.

The new copyright protection system is a departure from the status quo for the publishing industry. Until now, online repositories have had no choice but to use DMCA takedown notices to regulate copyright enforcement. This means that infringing content is left online until the rights-holder requests it be removed, which is a cumbersome and slow process.

The QPP provides premium services to authors and publishers for distributing content to Scribd's massive audience of avid readers, while also providing tools to protect against piracy. QPP (http://www.scribd.com/publisher/signup) provides publishers with a Scribd "Shelf" that they can customize with their own branding and use to securely store and distribute their content via the Scribd service. Participating in Scribd's new offering gives publishers a simple, hosted platform for publishing their documents, as well as a slew of features that would be costly and difficult to implement on their own.

Website: http://www.scribd.com/