Judge appears to back Google's defense of digital books project | Internet & Media - CNET News

A U.S. judge made comments Monday that suggest favor for Google's defense of its digital books project, which could hobble an authors group's effort to stop it.
The Authors Guild, which represents the interests of authors, says the project constitutes massive copyright infringement. Google, which has scanned more than 20 million books since forming partnerships with several major universities to digitize their research libraries in 2004, argues that the project is exempt under the "fair use" provision of copyright law because it shows only short "snippets" of text online.