The more I think about it, with all the pending litigation, it's pretty amazing that last night's New York Public Library debate between Google and the authors and publishers groups was able to take place at all. But it did, and hoo boy did the sparks fly, more than living up to NYPL events czar Paul Holdengräber's promise of a "contentious smackdown."

The first order of business, before the fighting, was the announcement of the change in nomenclature from Google Print to Google Book Search. After some historical context and a cursory look at the GBS project, moderator Chris Anderson (e-i-c of Wired) asked Authors' Guild president Nick Taylor just what his group's problem with Google was. "We object to the appropriation of work that authors own," Taylor said simply. Even if Google's actions are for "an admittedly good end," they still represtent "a rogue version of eminent domain" in the Guild's eyes. Not so, retorted Google VP David Drummond, who observed that users wouldn't be able to read copyrighted books through GBS. "This is not Napster," he emphasized. "Information doesn't want to be free. But it does want to be found."

Stanford Law prof Lawrence Lessig zeroed in on the principle of "free use," arguing that provisions existed for free use under current copyright law and that it was a good thing they did, since the free flow of information encourages innovation. What the Authors Guild was calling for, he said, was "capitalism by soviet." At which point Association of American Publishers VP Allan Adler jumped in and said that was nice speechifying, "but that has nothing to do with Google." One of his first key talking points was that Google was creating "the world's largest digital library" as a proprietary database, then planning to make a profit off of it—and if they were going to create value from those books, then authors and publishers should have the opportunity for compensation. Google's opt-out standard for participation set a dangerous precedent, he argued, if not an invitation to outright piracy by other databases. "You're saying authors and publishers should be punished for being slow," Adler charged Lessig at one point. The problem, Lessig replied, was that they'd always be slow, and that if the process of change were left up to the authors and publishers, nothing would get done and fair use would be eliminated.

The questions from the audience were equally lively, if occasionally long-winded. One of the most memorable soundbites came from a woman who described herself as a published author and characterized the debaters as clashing rhinoceroses: "I don't want to be a chipmunk caught in a rhino sandwich," she lamented. (The room was full of chipmunks, by the way; in addition to Steven Johnson, who got to ask a question of his own about fair use, I spotted Amanda Stern, Lisa Selin Davis, David Margolick, Joshua Shenk, and David Byrne.) Another audience member pushed Adler on why GBS would be so bad; hadn't Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" program been proven to sell books? Amazon's a bookseller, Adler pointed out, Google isn't. There was no proof that users searching for books would go on to buy them. Instead, they might check them out of the library. "Well, we can't have that!" some wag in the back of the room shouted. After the show, I managed to get a minute with Adler, where he noted that he wasn't slamming libraries, just pointing out that buying a book wasn't the only end result of an online search. A few yards away, Lessig was continuing to chip away at the other side's position that people who generate subsidiary value out of creative works must always compensate the original creators. "So it's like saying that the White Sox should pay the Louisville Slugger people a royalty for putting their bats to such great use?" I asked. "Exactly," he nodded.