Written By Kate Zimmermann | March 6, 2007 | Share This |

In remarks for the Association of American Publishers, today Microsoft’s Associate General Counsel, Thomas Rubin, slammed Google for violating the Copyright Act. Rubin announced,

“Google persuaded several libraries to give it unfettered access to their collections, both copyrighted and public domain works. It also entered into agreements with several publishers to acquire rights to certain of their copyrighted books. Despite such deals, in late 2004 Google basically turned its back on its partners.

“…Google has chosen the wrong path for the longer term, because it systematically violates copyright and deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetizing their works.

“…Google assumes that [it] is the only game in town. Google argues that authors and publishers should simply notify Google if they want to preserve their rights in their works. But what if, as is inevitable, other companies around the world start taking the same approach? Should copyright owners be obligated to track down everyone engaging in unauthorized copying in order to preserve their exclusive rights in their works? Presumably, the desire to preserve these rights is why they asserted copyright in the first place.

“…Google’s track record of protecting copyrights in other parts of its business is weak at best. Anyone who visits YouTube, which Google purchased last year, will immediately recognize that it follows a similar cavalier approach to copyright.

“…Google employees have actively encouraged advertisers to build advertising programs around key words referring to pirated software, including pirated Microsoft software. And we weren’t the only victims – Google also encouraged the use of keywords and advertising text referring to illegal copies of music and movies. These actions bolstered websites dedicated to piracy and reportedly netted Google around $800,000 in advertising revenues from just four such pirate sites. These are not the actions of a company that has the interests of copyright owners as one of its priorities.”

Rubin’s verbal shake down of Google Book Search is essentially a pitch for Microsoft’s own Live Search Academic and Live Search Books. He begins his speech,

“What path will we as a society choose in making the world’s books and publications available online? Will we choose a path that nourishes creativity and innovation over the long term and that preserves incentives for authors to offer their best works online? Or will we choose a path that encourages companies simply to “take” the works of others, without any regard for copyright or the impact of their actions on authors and publishers too? Microsoft, I’m pleased to say, has chosen the former path.”

Is Microsoft really the savior of copyright materials? Danny Sullivan has his own thoughts,

“Let’s be clear. In general, Microsoft does exactly what Google does in terms of taking content and indexing it without permission. That’s how most of its search services operate. They index pages unless site owners specifically opt-out. Microsoft doesn’t call up a site owner and say “Hey, we want to spider your pages. OK?” It just does that. And over in Belgium, that group that sued Google over indexing news content? Yeah, don’t forget they went after Microsoft as well.”

Though Rubin makes some legitimate points, in many cases, Live.com (by virtue of being a search engine) is guilty of the same violations. Rubin’s weak string of insults to Google makes Microsoft look petty, not innovative, and ignorant of larger issues surrounding copyright laws.

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