Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies; The New York Times, 5/18/09

Brad Stone via The New York Times; Site Lets Writers Sell Digital Copies:

"The Scribd Web site is the most popular of several document-sharing sites that take a YouTube-like approach to text, letting people upload sample chapters of books, research reports, homework, recipes and the like. Users can read documents on the site, embed them in other sites and share links over social networks and e-mail.

In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied...

Trying to address the piracy problem, Scribd is building a database of copyrighted works and using it to filter its system. If a publisher participates in the Scribd store, its books will be added to that database, the company said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/technology/start-ups/18download.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=scribd&st=cse

To rip or not to rip?: Is backing up a DVD fair use or piracy?; Economist.com, 5/1/09

Via Economist.com; To rip or not to rip?: Is backing up a DVD fair use or piracy?:

"SHOULD people who have bought DVDs legally be allowed to make digital copies of them for their own use? Any reasonable person would say yes. In copyright terms, that ought to be considered “fair use”. The law, however, presently says otherwise...

The one way you can legally copy a DVD, at least for the moment, is to buy one of the $10,000 home-server and player combos beloved by Hollywood moguls and made by a Silicon Valley firm called Kaleidescape."

http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13579732