How Ironic...

Thomas Rubin is a council so he is probably not aware that Vista pretty much ripped off a couple of OS X's features and app design (calendar, etc.). Not to mention their latest Live initiative which tries to mimic all of Google's services.

Talk about 'make money solely on the backs of other people’s ideas'...

yeah, lets KJ is correct, one should also remember that win95 ripped out the Apple-II features a long time ago.. in fact most of the GUI was a rip off on the old apple systems..!!

iI think that MSFT and Googs will go for each other throats soon.. the market is shrinking and somebody needs to sit on the top...

And the Apple GUI was partly ripped of from Xerox PARC, who also ripped off concepts that existed on physical paper & desktops. That's culture, to mix the best ideas to create new ideas...

I agree partially with Microsoft.

Google/YouTube puts the burden on the copyright holder to police their rights. I believe the burden should be on YouTube to police their users, in good faith to the content producing community.

What if a content creator is unconcerned with the increased exposure from a YouTube placement? After that, the "YouTube benefits you" argument falls apart.

As a blogger who sees his content republished around the web, on anonymous splogs with no contact information, I relate to content producers who feel bullied by Google.

I think Microsoft think like this just because they didn't have this idea before...

Did you see the announcement about Google Book Search now containing 29K Springer books? That is it already has them in the library.

Comments here
exacteditions.blogspot.com/2007/03/google-vs-microsoft.html

Does anyone know how GBS counts books? The query mentioned in that link says they have 46,600 Springer books and the press release says there are *only* 29K. I didnt feel like paging through the results to check up ;-)

< As a blogger who sees his content republished around the web, on anonymous splogs with no contact information, I relate to content producers who feel bullied by Google. >

You really think those splogs wouldn't exist if there were no Google? No – they would just be much harder to find. ;-P

Why is there no audio version of youtube?

it's weird..

If a youtube style MP3 site were to pop up... allowing users to upload any music files they want, and requiring dmca requests to get content taken down... we all know what would happen.

It'd be sued out of existence very quickly. Which makes me wonder what the difference between audio and video is when it comes to the web? Or, what's the difference between books and web content?

Everyone seems to be posting about how Microsoft is about to attack Google over copyright issues. Did anyone notice that this attack is very similar to what Microsoft said about Open Source software about 4 or 5 years ago. They will do this every few years whenever a new idea or company is starting to eat at their profits. Its not news.

My thoughts on this – MS may get mainline publishers and hollywood on their side with this because MS has played on this battlefield before.

Unfortunately, a win for MS on this turf is a lost for them in the online world. They cannot attack Google on copyright, and win online as well – since the online world as already altered the way copyright laws are interpreted.

They do anything they can to destroy Google's credibility. On the other hand, they mimic Google as much as possible (by creating search engines, MSN Soapbox, etc.). That means they don't have an opinion, they just want to beat Google online.

"MSR Redmond head Rico Malvar showed attendees what Microsoft is doing to increase search relevance using new algorithms aimed at predicting user search behavior, and thus enhancing the quality and relevance of search results."

http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Researchers_Look_to_the_Future_of_Search/1173216970

Seach is the main thing and thats what MSFT have lost out on. MIX and "Epigraph" seem to be new technologies.. within their folio

just in... Microsoft Threatened To Kill Mac Office To Gain Infamous 1997 Apple Deal, E-Mails Reveal

http://edge-op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/122106/PLEX0_6060.pdf

Microsoft is placing blame on Google trying to bring them down for copyright but Microsoft is copying some of OS X. Microsoft is trying to take Google down because they couldn't buy the companies Google got. Microsoft lost out and wanting payback.

"fair use (which allows even commercial use of works of others, if limited to short excerpts)"

Ah, but Philipp, is Google limiting its use of a scanned book to a short excerpt? Methinks not.

Yes, Google is only showing me a short excerpt. And you another short excerpt. But collectively, it is showing short excerpts from the entire book! Its sum total commercial use of the book is not just a short excerpt. Now, if Google only ever showed the same few short excerpt, from a whole book, to every single user, that would be different. But that is not what Google is doing.

You get what I am saying?

Google is a automatic machine, Microsoft's MSN also this kind of machine. Both have the copyrights problem.
According to my research, Google need not answer for this problem. Although have some common copyrights portocol, but can not run it very well on the net for the machine.This problem comes from bugs of Internet.

Tim: A certain amount of the book, however, will not display, no matter what. I believe the precise number can be varied. So the entire book can't be scanned through multiple accounts.

As for Microsoft... I question their motivations for launching this attack. It just feels wrong to me for Microsoft to claim to be standing up for the rights of others, in order to bash its rival.

Mysterious: Thank you, that is good to know.. that some portions of the book will not display to anybody, on any account, anywhere in the world. That's good thinking.

But I think the core of my argument still remains. Google is making constant use not just of a few sentences, not just of a few pages, but of a substantial portion of the book. Is that portion 50%? 25%? 10%? 5%? Let's say it is only 5%. And let's take, for example, one of my favorite books, "Elements of Information Theory" by Thomas Cover and Joy Thomas. It is a 507-page book. So 5% of that book is...25 pages.

Is making costant use of 25 pages of a book fair use? When I think fair use, I think of a professor making 1 page photocopies for his class. Or maybe up to 3 pages, if it is a longer essay. But 25 pages? That is quite substantial.

And yes, you could indeed lower the percentage even more, to 2.5% or 1%, in which case Google would only be using 12 pages or 5 pages. But then one has to wonder: Why scan the book, at all? The whole purpose of full text book search is that, instead of just using the title of the book, one is using the full text. So that if the info you want is located -anywhere- in the book, you can still find it.

But if Google never uses 99% of the book, then what is the point of book search?

Tim, I'm not completely sure how it works. But I think Google use the full- text of the book for *search*; in other words, the book has been indexed and is searched to bring relevant results to a query. But the full text of; the book is not displayed. So for example, users may only see up to 1% of the book, but search was made of a full index of the book to correctly find books relevant to a query.

Or – I think you are correct in the way it works. At least, that is my understanding, too.

But then.. so what? So you search for something, Google shows you a book title, but then there is only a 1% chance of actually being able to see the relevant snippet from that book? That's pretty much a worthless search, because you have no way of evaluating whether or not your search result was good.

The solution, then, is for Google to show 10%, 25%, or 50% of a book. Not all to the same user, of course. I know that is not the issue/problem/question. But only to show 1 page, to the right user at the right time. But to have 50% of the book available, of 1-pagers, to show.

In that case there is now a 50% chance of being able to see something when you search.. which is much better than 1%.

But then we're back to the old problem that Google is now using 50% of the book on a regular basis! That is 253 pages, of the book I mentioned above. And that is no longer fair use!

Don't you see the dilemma?