Next Wednesday evening, December 14, I'll be part of a discussion about Google Book Search.

The other panelists are Allan Adler, of the American Association of Publishers; Paul Aiken, of the Author's Guild; and Cameron Stracher, of New York Law School.

It's free -- it runs from 6:30 to 8pm at the bar association building at 42 W. 44th in New York City.

We had our organizational call this afternoon to prepare for the panel.  It took no time and we were all very polite to one another.  I'm open to all suggestions for transformational arguments -- things I can say that will make the other side suddenly see a shaft of light descending from the ceiling, accompanied by a fluttering and well-read spirit from the future.

But I'll start by making sure we all have our facts straight.  Snippets, folks, snippets!  And the libraries are using their digital copies to make books available to the blind and disabled!  And it must be that the publishers have it in for libraries -- they can't stand the idea of all this free-form borrowing.  If that's the case, why haven't they sued the libraries?

Or is this whole fight just a holdup?