This morning's FT carries the story that Microsoft will this afternoon make a speech to American publishers attacking Google's "cavalier" attitude to copyright. The story carries quotes from a forthcoming speech from Tom Rubin, a senior lawyer at Redmond:
Tom Rubin... will say in a speech in New York that while authors and publishers find it hard to cover costs, "companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the back of other people's content, are raking in billions through advertising and initial public offerings".
Mr Rubin will tell the AAP's annual meeting that Google's decision to take digital copies of all books in various library collections, unless publishers tell it not to, "systematically violates copyright, deprives authors and publishers of an important avenue for monetising their works and, in doing so, undermines incentives to create".
MS clearly feels it's a good time to strike out at Google, which has been sending a lot of heat towards Seattle recently thanks to its dominance of the internet advertising market and web developments. With a number of people attacking Google on copyright already - TV companies, book publishers and Belgian newspaper groups among them - Microsoft probably hopes it can gain a sympathetic ear from content owners looking for another option.
