Microsoft attacks Google on copyright
Microsoft on Tuesday launches a fierce attack on Google over its "cavalier" approach to copyright, accusing the internet company of exploiting books, music, films and television programmes without permission. — Tom Rubin, associate general counsel …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's attack lands just months after it chose the opposite path for itself: since December its Live Search Books service has limited itself to publications no longer under copyright, which lets associate general counsel Tom Rubin frame Google's book scanning not merely as a rival product but as a violation of basic permissions.
The timing pairs the legal broadside with commercial courtship of content owners — Microsoft is jointly building an online video platform with the Associated Press for thousands of U.S. newspapers, giving its copyright argument a concrete offer behind it.
First-order effects
- Google is forced onto the defensive over its book-scanning program, facing a well-resourced accuser that argues every work it scans without permission exploits authors and publishers.
- Publishers and other rights holders gain a powerful corporate ally willing to make their case at scale, raising the reputational price of the scan-first model.
Second-order effects
- Media companies choosing digitization partners now face a sharper fork between Microsoft's permission-first stack — Live Search Books plus the AP newspaper video platform — and Google's approach.
- Other search and platform players can adopt the permission-based pitch as differentiation, turning rights compliance into a selling point rather than a cost.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, mass digitization of books and broadcast archives splits into two structural camps — ask permission first versus scan and settle disputes afterward — moving the real decision-making toward courts and regulators.
- Copyright hardens into a standing competitive weapon between platform companies rather than a background legal constraint, shaping alliances between technology firms and content industries.
The trend: Competition among platform companies is pulling copyright out of the legal backwater and into the front line, as rivals stake out permission-based and scan-and-settle models for digitizing the world's books and media.