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Last year, I wrote about some issues I had with the way Scribd tried to avoid liability by suggesting that public domain documents couldn't be hosted on the site or that fair use was not allowed. To the company's credit, it responded quickly and fixed the situation, but soon after that I switched to (mostly) using Docstoc to host documents. Doctstoc has its own problems as well, but for the most part has worked well for me. Still, in my experience Scribd is still quite popular among folks -- especially for uploading and hosting legal documents. Apparently, the company recently made some quiet changes and it's seriously pissed off law professor Eric Goldman, who has relied on the site for quite some time. The key problem? Without clear notification, it took "older" (and older is left undefined) documents and put them behind a paywall. As Goldman notes, the whole reason he used Scribd was to make the documents available, and it was quite a shock to suddenly find them behind a paywall: Scribd's paywall stunt instantly put Scribd on my shitlist because it vitiates the reason I chose to use Scribd in the first place. I don't know that they ever promised me perpetual free access to the documents I post, but their value proposition always has been open access to the documents--freely shared with everyone and indexed in the search engines. The paywall destroys that value proposition. They've taken the documents that I wanted to freely share with the public (many of them public documents like court rulings and filings) and made them inaccessible. If my readers can't freely get the documents I wanted to share with them, then what's the point of using Scribd in the first place??? I also feel like Scribd used me. With their implicit promise of open access, they got me to share a lot of high-interest documents and generate lots of link love, then they flipped the default (from free to paywall) as part of a cash grab. I could check out of Scribd, but then I would break a lot of links and it would take a lot of time. So now I feel trapped. It's a terrible feeling. Goldman is looking at other options, including Docstoc and Rapidshare. Another one worth checking out could be Slideshare, or even potentially Google Docs. However, all this has me thinking again about the wisdom of relying on third parties for such things (even though I do it myself). I do like the ability to display PDF documents, such as legal filings, embedded within a post, but I'm wondering if there are any simple solutions for setting up that sort of thing on your own server. Anyone know of any? 49 Comments | Leave a Comment
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A suggestion.
I don't know of any simple solution myself, but I suspect that the folks at Super User likely would, if you ask them.
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Know of any?
If you don't mind using Flash, then one option is to go with FlexPaper. It's exactly what you want, but though it claims to be "GPL v3," it's really not (you have to display their logo even on modified versions, and you can't use it for free on a commercial site). Might be worth the $70, though. There's also SWFTools, which includes PDF2SWF, and is completely open source. However, this generates a distinct .swf file for each PDF, so I don't know if it's the right solution. If you don't want Flash and your site is uses PHP, you might be able to hack something together using Samuraj Data's online coverter and embedding the HTML in an iframe. There's also CynergyPDF, but it's only for Joomla-powered websites.
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Mat, Sep 20th, 2010 @ 7:22pm Have you thought of the idea of PAYING people to host your documents so you can make them available for free? You put your documents in the cloud for free then they have no value and you can't really get upset if the people you gave them to choose to do things with them that you don't like. You don't get stuff for free - and if you're dumb enough to think that you do then you deserve everything you get. Apparently our "law professor" shouldn't really be trusted to make adult decisions.
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SUNWARD (profile), Sep 20th, 2010 @ 7:36pm web hosting is now cheap. Host the files yourself and you also get to keep control of it. No more problems with suppliers. And it adds to the search ranking of your own site.
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Re:
Quick, stop breathing. You haven't paid the required Oxygen Fee.
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abc gum, Sep 20th, 2010 @ 7:43pm So, the cloud has lost its silver lining
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Re: Re:
You must crack yourself up when people pay for oxygen, or when you see people paying for water.. because after all, rain is free, amirite?
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Re: Karl
I would recommend FlexPaper too, sure you have to pay to get rid of the logo if you're using it for commercial purposes but thats fair enough, gotta give them some cred for building a good viewer http://flexpaper.devaldi.com
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Anonymous Coward, Sep 20th, 2010 @ 8:28pm Maybe the infringement (both patent and copyright) legal expenses makes it not plausible to do something like this for free?
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embed
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Anonymous Coward, Sep 20th, 2010 @ 9:27pm Maybe there is a way to put it on Google Books?
"Can Authors and Publishers distribute their works under the settlement for free, under a Creative Commons license or otherwise? Yes. Rightsholders are free to set any price for their work including the ability to distribute their work free of charge. If you are interested in distributing your work for free, including under a Creative Commons license, then you should claim your Book on the Claim Form and, on the Manage Your Books page, fill in the box asking you to specify your sale price for the book at zero. In the future, the Claim Form will also provide an option for you to offer your Book under a Creative Commons license, and you should check the Claim Form periodically for that option to appear. The Registry will inform Google of your request, and Google will include information on its web
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site so that end users are aware of the licensing terms chosen by you. Rightsholders are also free to authorize Google directly to distribute their book through a Creative Commons license." http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/help/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=118704#q43f
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Chunky Vomit, Sep 21st, 2010 @ 2:59am I guess there is something of a Catch 22 here. After all, he did put the documents on servers that don't belong to him. I wonder: is there a reason why Google Docs isn't an option here? I realize that the service has its limitations, but I have had great luck with sharing documents on that service. I wonder if they index documents open to the entire web?
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try it, scribd just opened the flood gates for a whoop-ass of document spam :p
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Or, you could just go to the sources linked in the article, like this report from Channel 5 News. Now, Inforwars' reaction is a bit histrionic, but it's based on truth. (Unlike a lot of other stuff on there.)
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(Emphasis mine.) But I guess you're right about the requirement that the logo stay in place. You learn something new every day, I guess. We're probably just picking nits at this point. FlexPaper seems like a good program, so even if it was proprietary, it would be worth using IMHO.
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36.
OBJECT tag?
I do like the ability to display PDF documents, such as legal filings, embedded within a post, but I'm wondering if there are any simple solutions for setting up that sort of thing on your own server. Anyone know of any? Does anything prevent you from storing the files on your own server and using an OBJECT tag in your posts? This page has instructions for using the OBJECT tag to embed a PDF. The link on that page to the explanation of PDF Open Parameters is stale, but here is a PDF that explains PDF Open Parameters.
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37. shree
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woops
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/291813/best-way-to-embed-pdf-in-html
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Anonymous Coward, Sep 21st, 2010 @ 10:33am I am quite disappointed that Mr. Goldman cast aside professional decorum and engaged in a public rant that ill serves his position as a member of academia. Now that he has put emotion before reason, perhaps he will realize that reversing the two and dealing directly with the site will yield the results he wants.
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Anonymous Coward, Sep 21st, 2010 @ 12:47pm You can host the documents yourself, but use an external viewer application in an iframe to embed them. Google provides a viewer and so does Zoho. Google viewer: https://docs.google.com/viewer Zoho viewer: http://viewer.zoho.com/home.do It might be worthwhile to include a direct dl link to the document if possible as a backup.
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Anonymous Coward, Sep 21st, 2010 @ 1:22pm Yes just host the documents yourself, then you have control over them.
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Re:
Yes, he should just be vaguely arrogant and elitist, like a certain anonymous lawyer.
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Scribd Alternative
Use http://www.notelog.com/ if you're looking to post and share your docs. If your used to using scribd this is the best alternative because your technically still using scbrid on this site. The site is academic based, but anyone can create an account outside of academics by creating an expert account. It's absolutely free...
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idea
p2p filesharing programs. There are a couple of scribd alternatives out there.
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