So it seems the internet marketing world has driven another useful tool to clamp down on what it allows. Scribd has recently discontinued support for HTML uploads.

What does this mean? Basically, you can't upload HTML files with active links in them anymore. So all that backlink "juice" you could get from Scribd is now unavailable.

Scribd isn't as well known a name as Squidoo and some other sites in the internet marketing domain, but there are a lot of people who have been using it.

But several things, such as a recent Stompernet video showing how to use Scribd for backlinks and a panelist at the Pubcon conference in December suggesting the same, probably drove a lot of new people to suddenly start posting crap on the site. And Scribd decided enough was enough.

I've posted on using Web 2.0 tools for marketing before and this is yet another example of how abusing a good tool tips the scales against us.

I've already seen some posts on forums from people complaining about how Scribd pulled the mat out from underneath them by disallowing links. All the money they were making off Scribd traffic is now gone.

Well, I'm sorry but if you take advantage of someone's free service, what do you expect? It's their website and they're running it to make money for themselves, not for you.

If you can make money from it while staying within their terms of service, it's great for everyone. But as soon as people start taking advantage of them, it suddenly becomes great for only one party - and it isn't Scribd.

And stuff like what Stompernet and plenty of other people who market to marketers put out just compounds the problem. Lots of newbie internet marketers see the video and suddenly think that's the magic ingredient to success.

They don't realize that it's only one aspect, and it needs to be done in moderation.

The people who put these videos out will tell you they suggest restraint but the reality is, many of the people who watch the video will think "if it works well in moderation, it's going to work even better in quantity."

I really think the people that put this information out there for large-scale public consumption ought to realize that their warnings about restraint, when they even offer any, are going to be ignored by a certain percentage of their audience.

Next time you're using some kind of Web 2.0 site (or any other free site that benefits you), ask yourself if you would want someone doing the same thing on a site you owned.

If you wouldn't want someone to do it on your site, don't do it on theirs.