Scribd, is a YouTube for documents, is the word around. But I would say it certainly is not a new idea.

Going back 3-5 years ago, "I do not recall the name of the url - appreciate help on this" there was a company that let users upload their url, over time there were 100s of documents both pdf and doc format.

This company was bought over by TechRepublic and TechRepublic in turn was bought over by CNet

The company I am speaking about is itpapers. With the technology updates scribd does have a better interface, no doubt.