Mike, the document that seems to have sparked this particular bout of whining is one that can be freely downloaded from the court's web site. I understand that is the exception rather than the rule in term of retrieval of court documents.... but the point is that if someone else has posted docs from the California case in some other place on the internet, I don't see how one can assume that it was "stolen" from Jack's site.
Actually, in this particular case, the link is to a site being maintained by the lead plaintiff in the case, Edward C. Noonan, who happens to be in pro se; the proof of service on the document clearly indicates that it was mailed to him. So now its comes to Fogbowers bemoaning the fact that Mr. Noonan posts a document he received in the mail in his own case to his own scribd account.
Edit: I mean... isn't it just as logical to assume that Noonan posted it first, and Jack got his copy for Noonan's scribd page -- as the other way around?
I appreciate the work that you've done and the work that Jack has done, but I thought the whole point was to make the information freely available. If it is irksome to you to see public record stuff that you have posted "stolen" and reposted elsewhere... then you don't have to post it in the first place.
I'm not discounting the value of the effort. I'm just saying that the whole POINT of putting it up is to disseminate the information. The company that runs Scribd has literally invested millions of dollars in developing their technology, and maintaining their servers, pretty much offering anyone and everybody free hosting of whatever they want to post.
They also do provide the ability to limit downloading, and certainly it makes sense to use those tools if something that is copyrighted is posted, or it's a situation like a court transcript which has to be purchased from a court reporter.
I'd also point out that many of the documents that are shared via scribd posting are court filings that have been downloaded directly from Orly's web site. Typically, Orly posts something, someone mentions it, others don't want to go there because of the virus problem, and within about 10 minutes someone has pulled it off of Orly's site, posted it to scribd, and posts a link. So yes that is appreciated, yes we all benefit, and yes that took some effort... but in what way (ethically) is the "stealing" of a document from someone else's Scribd web site any different from the "stealing" of the same document from Orly's malware infested site?
I mean... no one is required to share the docs in the first place. I actually posted stuff to scribd on my own from the Keyes v. Bowen case, to share with Politijab - that's why I remembered that the Sacramento Court posts PDF's on line. But I wouldn't have expected someone who found it and downloaded it from my scribd account to give me credit -- or to refrain from downloading -- the document never belonged to me in the first place.
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