The Federal district court handling the Authors Guild’s suit against Google over Google Books has scheduled a hearing on for February 18, 2010 in New York City (after several postponements). The parties, their supporters and the Department of Justice will all get to speak. Twenty-six outside groups will each get five minutes to speak about the deal—21 against and 5 in favor. (If the numbers seem off-balance, note that France is on the “con” side, and if the statist-stasist-centralist-protectionist French are against something tech-related, how bad an idea could it really be?)

Although the settlement is highly arcane, how this issue is resolved will probably do as much, for better or worse, to shape our digital future in the years to come as any tech policy issue currently under discussion. (I’d say only net neutrality,  privacy regulation and media socialization would fall into the same tier of such fork-in-the-road decision-points.)

So of course this profoundly important public hearing is going to be livecasted, right? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. Continue reading →

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