With recent back and forth over the proposed Google Book Search settlement (e.g., Robert Darnton's essay in The New York Review of Books; Tim O'Reilly's response; and James Grimmelman's litany of proposed corrections predating both at The Labortorium), I've been cast again into thinking about aspects of the agreement.

Recently, I spoke with several individuals who had been involved in the settlement negotiations as rightsholders (author or publisher representatives), and it became apparent from their perspective that one of the things that most rankled in these recent commentaries was Darnton's suggestion that a single terminal per public library building constituted inadequate open access to the GBS collection – an important issue that I had earlier addressed with considerably less eloquence and historical context.

From the rightsholders' perspective, one terminal per library, instead of being stingy, quivered with profligacy. I heard remarked by several individuals (and often enough now to feel it corroborated) that indeed this concession started out far more restricted: either no public access, or starkly limited access – perhaps apocryphally, a single terminal in each State capitol, or one terminal in each city. In short, it was impressed upon me that libraries were lucky to get as much as they did.

As I understand it, rightsholders feared that having unhindered access to books online at libraries might (among other issues) encourage libraries to decelerate buying print books, thereby reducing royalties to authors and profits to publishers. In this equation, more public access = less revenue.

It is difficult to credit that frustrating access is ever able to delay or stem fundamental social trends – for example, the increasing importance of visual and interactive media. Or impact essential library acquisitions, which to an increasing degree, forced by restrictions in public funding, focus on frontlist bestsellers (often leased, not bought) and niches for specific audiences. Or the fact – hold on, this is wild-assed stuff – that access to online books that can't be satisfactorily printed because of restrictive rules might actually generate sales of both print and ebooks. Or the possibility that searching and reading networked books for anyone under the age of 40 might be an inherently social activity that generally increases enthusiasm for all forms of reading. These  conceptions of social engagement, participation, and interaction did not prejudice the conversations in New York City where content owners made decisions about what libraries could do with their new digital books.

Let's put aside the hilarity of the digital place where we now sit, in which a town of Philadelphia's size might start out with as many public access terminals as a sprawling midwestern city of one-quarter the population yet as many public library branches, and a fraction of the diversity of City of Brotherly Love. Appreciate the irony of it: a few short blocks from Sixth Ave., the wealth of color, language, history, culture, and experience enliven the world. Yet the muse of authors and publishers is the fear that they will sell fewer of their new books, and make less money, by increasing access to books that libraries long ago paid for out of public funds. Somebody, please take these people to a modern urban library: it ain't a bunch of people gathered around in circles talking about how much Nabokov loved butterflies.

Let us consider a far more basic, more fundamental concern: the proposed Google Book Search settlement is embedded in a set of conceptions about books, reading, and information access which is as profoundly obsolescent as the printed Encyclopedia. This settlement was crafted by well-established actors: authors and publishers whose primary cognitive map of the world of books was established in 1965, and these days that they inhabit are only a reaction to it.

I understand and appreciate that the settlement proposal provides for an increase in the number of public terminals, should it pass muster with the rightsholders. But let us call this for what it is: an appropriation of sponsorship of access to our culture that is inadequately informed by imagination, possibility, and fairness.

This is a world where young children carry around in the palm of their hands gaming consoles that have more networked computing capacity than a moderately powerful Sun workstation of five years back. Where increasingly I think about printed books with as much fondness as large cinder blocks, and they are often about as well-made. And yet authors and publishers worry that a fair level of access to digitized books in return for a risky monopoly of distribution and commercialization might reduce their profits. Truly, this should not be their worry. Their eyes remain cast on a horizon which has fallen from the earth, while a new sun is rising.

The settlement describes a world of time past, not a world of possibilities. Could we charter a redrafting of the settlement's terms with libraries? Yes, we can start with Grimmelman's many wise contributions. But let us envision an alternative world where children routinely carry Alexandria in their hands. Where they experience works of literature as games, pushing at the borders of their knowledge and experience by engaging the library with others as a festschrift. Where even one of the central tenets of the settlement: that works will not be altered save for the most spare hyperlinking, and annotations shared among a miserly numbered group of friends, shall be thrown from the House of Assumption.

We want our citizens to remake these books. We shall allow unceasing access to all books within our libraries; there shall be no barriers between them. The people served by our libraries – let them show us how to re-make literature in a world where it fits in the circle of many hands, caressed by fingers, shared between minds. Libraries are laboratories for the future of reading, and with this, we have the key to it. Let us open the door of experience. We might seize this opportunity to re-think intellectual property rights and return the sunlight of insight to new generations.

Digital books are sparkles of magic untapped. The settlement proposes a bold path from darkness. But it is a trail that circles back to an old forest, abandoned. Our people have left, ventured onto a flat savannah, strewn with rocks, thorny shrubs, windblown trees, beasts. We can see it all now. And we are starting fires, with wood from fallen trees. Burning down the forest.