IP Democracy: Microsoft Exploits Google's Copyright Vulnerabilities

Microsoft is publicly attacking Google for what the company contends is the search giant’s “cavalier” approach to copyright issues. In an orchestrated press campaign, Microsoft has released to top news outlets copy of a speech (speech now on Microsoft’s website) to be given today by Associate General Counsel Thomas Rubin at the Association of American Publishers annual meeting.

The speech is a no-holds-barred condemnation of Google, a phenomenally successful company that sticks in Microsoft’s craw. While holding out Microsoft’s own online book search efforts, Live Search Academic and Live Search Books, as morally and legally superior, Rubin blasts Google’s Book Search. Rubin’s main criticism is that Google’s book scanning efforts rely on the fair use doctrine rather than individual deals with book publishers.

In my view, 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. In doing so, it undermines critical incentives to create.

Rubin then goes on to conflate Google’s book project with YouTube’s problems surrounding uploaded videos that contain copyrighted content (which Mike at TechDirt points out, are two completely different issues).

In essence, Google is saying to you and to other copyright owners: “Trust us - you’re protected. We’ll keep the digital copies secure, we’ll only show snippets, we won’t harm you, we’ll promote you.” But 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. Since YouTube’s inception, television companies, movie studios and record labels have all complained that the site knowingly tolerates piracy. In the face of YouTube’s refusal to take any effective action, copyright owners have now been forced to resort to litigation. And Google has yet to come up with a plan to restrain the massive infringements on YouTube.

Rubin sticks the knife in even deeper by throwing in yet another, completely different intellectual property issue, that of Google’s past sale of keyword searches that linked to sites which offer pirated content.

Another example is equally distressing. Microsoft was surprised to learn recently that Google employees have actively encouraged advertisers to build advertising programs around key words referring to pirated software, including pirated Microsoft software.

Microsoft is clearly flinging the dung around, but why? Rubin answers this question in part in his speech. Google has been so successful, has built such a useful search business, that practically no other company can compete. Publishers and the public think only of Google when it comes to search, although Rubin weirdly tries to spin Google’s dominance as somehow a byproduct of its disrespect for copyrights. “From the perspective of your business, Google’s approach is troubling for another reason. It assumes, in effect, that Google is the only game in town.”

However, the real motivation for Microsoft’s bald bid to tarnish Google is simply this: Google is vulnerable right now on copyright matters because of the highly publicized difficulties the company has experienced in cutting video content deals for YouTube. Even though Google’s vulnerability is more a matter of PR and not law, Microsoft sees an opening to try to weaken what had until recently been an unshakeable rival.

Although Microsoft’s attempt to exploit Google’s YouTube problems is understandable, it’s also slightly repulsive and reeks of desperation. The software titan is hoping to build itself up by tearing Google down, never a good long-term strategy for success. Microsoft might damage Google’s reputation in the short-term, but it’s highly doubtful that Google’s incredible usefulness, not to mention its solid legal footing, will slip over time.

In the meanwhile, Microsoft will still be Microsoft, still playing distant second to Google. I would argue that Microsoft has damaged its own reputation with this lambast, showing to the world how it’s willing to tear down rivals instead of building itself up. That’s just not classy.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on March 6, 2007 6:59 AM to IP Democracy