My blog entry yesterday was about how Scribd banned outgoing links from their site. After reading their response to my questions, one can see that the SEO tactics, as described by Don Crowther, in his video ‘No Secrets, were in violation of their TOS.

It looks as though Scribd is blaming StomperNet for the banning, in particluar Don Crowther. WOW…I wonder if he will end up being the scapegoat on this. Apparently his so-called white hat tactics were pretty dirty. A head may roll on this one.

An important thing to remember is that you must read the TOS of web sites you join. We all get so used to just checking off and agreeing to terms, that we get caught in messes like this. I think Don did not read the legaleeze.

At the end of the Scribd response, they claim that they will be offering a service for ‘legitimate’ marketers…probably will be a paid service…something that I eluded to yesterday on another blog.

hubpages.com replaces scribd

Jason Bentley to me, contact

show details 4:11 AM (5 hours ago)

Thanks for contacting us.

First off, it’s important to understand that we have never allowed the use of SEO tactics on the Scribd website. Such tactics, along with hidden linking, deep linking, and malicious JavaScript have always been a violation of our Terms of Service. Despite this, we’ve been highly tolerant of marketing documents that make use of one or two links to another site. This is because we felt it was important to provide our users with an option to display their document in HTML instead of FlashPaper. For a long time, marketers on Scribd represented a small - and largely responsible - percentage of our community.

The number of documents that crossed the line from “marketing” to spam dramatically increased toward the end of 2007. We’d already started to reevaluate our HTML policy when suddenly, over the holidays, Scribd was flooded with thousands of garden-variety spam documents and still many more innocent-looking “informational” documents that were a cornucopia of malicious marketing: hidden links, browser-jacking JavaScript - the works.

After considering our options, we made the difficult decision to enact both a zero-tolerance policy toward HTML marketing and a temporary no-link policy across the board. We disabled HTML uploads, and because of the deluge of new spam-oriented accounts, we were forced to ban most of the HTML marketers already on Scribd.

As expected, we received a storm of complaints, and of course, many mentioned the StomperNet video. After I watched the clip, one fact stood out to me: whether through ignorance, carelessness, or malice, the guy instructed everyone watching to actively violate Scribd’s Terms of Service without any kind of disclaimer to that fact. This was reflected in the common threads were consistent throughout the many complaints and apologies we received: “I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong” and “I never read the Terms of Service.”

So one thing I would stress to your readers is: never base elements of your business on services for which you have not read the contract or Terms of Service. It’s as simple as that. Business ain’t for lemmings. Don’t follow the advice of a disembodied voice in an online video without doing your due diligence.

With all that said, legitimate and responsible marketers will soon be able to again use Scribd to drive traffic. We’ve been working on a solution that will let legitimate marketers place working links within documents, but without the mechanisms that left our site and our users vulnerable to predatory practices. Look for it in about two weeks, give or take, once we get everything in place.

Best regards,

Jason

–
Jason Bentley
Director, Community Development @ Scribd
jason@scribd.com
http://scribd.com

Finally, I have asked StomperNet for a response to this statement from Scribd. It will be interesting to see their response:

Hello

I am the Mad Ape and am investigating the banning of outgoing links on Scribd and would like to get a response from Don Crowther of StomperNet. In particular I would like him to respond to the following statement from Scribd:

“As expected, we received a storm of complaints, and of course, many mentioned the StomperNet video. After I watched the clip, one fact stood out to me: whether through ignorance, carelessness, or malice, the guy instructed everyone watching to actively violate Scribd’s Terms of Service without any kind of disclaimer to that fact.”

- Jason Bentley
Director, Community Development @ Scribd

Mr Crowther could you please answer the following:

1) Did you read Scribd’s Terms of Service?

2) Do you think that Scribd is unfairly singling you and your company out?

3) How do you intend to deal with this matter?

4) What will happen to the SMARTS program?

So as not to be claimed that I took this out of context, please see the entire Scribd statement on my blog at http://www.tatumba.com/blog/archives/324

Thank you for your time,

Sincerely;

The Mad Ape
www.tatumba.com

So until next time…

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