Google "systematically violates copyright" says Microsoft

Microsoft disapproves of Google's book search project

6 March 2007 14:27 GMT / By Amber Maitland

Microsoft is going on the offensive today and attacking Google for practices relating to its Google Books Search, the chief rival to Microsoft's Live Search Books.

Google "systematically violates copyright", Microsoft lawyer Thomas Rubin will say at a meeting of the Association of America Publishers in New York.

Releasing the content of the speech seems to rather take the thunder of the presentation, but Microsoft must be eager for media coverage of the diatribe.

Google Books Search involves scanning millions of publications from collections across the world and making them available for research online.

Microsoft's project mirrors it, except that the company is taking the step of checking with copyright owners before scanning the material.

Google has taken the stance that copyright owners can contact them to be excluded from the project, but otherwise it will go ahead with the scanning.

"Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people's content, are raking in billion through advertising revenue and IPOs", Mr Rubin will say.

In addition, Mr Rubin will point out that Google's YouTube is not known for protecting copyrighted material well.

"Anyone who visits YouTube, which Google purchased last year, will immediately recognise that it follows a similar cavalier approach to copyright."

Google has responded by saying that its tactics actually result in more exposure for publisher and authors.

Microsoft launched a similar attack on open source software five years ago; the company has since opened up to the software's potential because of growing support of it by consumers.

Full tags

Software, Online, Search engines, Google