Microsoft claims Google's Book Search project makes publishers and authors lose a part of their profits by showing their content online for the world to view free of charge.

At association of American Publishers annual meeting in New York, Thomas Rubin, Microsoft's associate general counsel for copyright, trademark, and trade secrets, said that Google "systematically violates copyright," that it creates no content of their own and make money on the backs of other people's content by selling advertising.

"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?" Rubin asked. Microsoft, he said, has chosen the former path.

Like Google, Microsoft is scanning thousands of books and making them  searchable online in a project called Live Search Books, but Microsoft has chosen only to scan works that are no longer protected under copyright law, or newer titles that publishers give express permission to reprint.

Unlike Microsoft, Google includes portions of copyrighted works under what it claims as "fair use," a portion of the United States Copyright Act that allows the use of copyrighted materials for certain purposes, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.

"The goal of search engines, and of products like Google Book Search and YouTube, is to help users find information from content producers of every size," wrote David Drummond, Google's senior vice president for corporate development, in a statement. "We do this by complying with international copyright laws, and the result has been more exposure and in many cases more revenue for authors, publishers, and producers of content."

Charles Baker, an intellectual property attorney at Porter & Hedges, said Google's book scanning project isn't necessarily protected by fair use, but it might not be direct copyright infringement, either.

Baker suggested that Microsoft might be attempting to play the good corporate in the eyes of publishers. "At the end of they day," he concluded, "Microsoft is trying to make its competitor look bad."

written by Cristian L.