Something this good just can’t happen easily:

The much-heralded project called Google Print would provide free online copies of out-of-copyright books and newer books still protected by copyrights, making them searchable with snippets of text available online. But Google’s (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) utopian project has hit a few bumps in the five months since it was announced, and Google is in the rare position of having to defend itself.

The idea made a lot of sense given Google’s search expertise, its incredible stash of technology resources and its stated mission to organize the world’s information. Google Print also complemented efforts within the company to develop perfect machine language translation, which means that some day a scanned book will theoretically be readable in any language, anywhere in the world.

Sounds great, but a serious criticism of the project emerged last week from academic publishers. In a six page letter, a group of publishers admonished the Mountain View, Calif.-based company for scanning copyrighted books without detailing their plans, leading to a possible “systematic infringement of copyright on a massive scale.”