[A2k] Re: [Upd-discuss] Fwd: Blind Groups Sue ASU flor Kindle Use

[Federico Heinz]

On 30/06/2009, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> Federico, don't you agree that the freedom of access to knowledge is
> threatened by the risk that through the "Kindle", Amazon might succeed
> in creating for itself effectively a gatekeeper role with regard to
> access to knowledge?

Not really. The risk of a Kindle monopoly doesn't seem all that high to me.
Everything with a screen is being repurposed as a reader nowadays. The problem
is not the Kindle, it's DRM, especially under DMCA-like conditions.

> [...] Such an alliance will succeed in turning the tide of international law
> if and only if we succeed in building relationships of collaboration, trust
> and mutual support between the diverse interest groups.

And in order to do that, each and every one of the members of that alliance
must fight for the whole thing, and not just for their specific portion. This
means, always communicate that the problem is "access to knowledge" and that
"access to knowledge for the {blind, poor, illiterate, dark-haired}" is just an
illustrative example of the general damage being done.

Those universities' plans with the DRM'ed books read like they got the idea
from Richard's "Right to Read". It affects blind students, it is true. But it
also affects all students.

What's worse, we can't count on textbook publishers acting stupidly *all* of
the time. At some point, one or more of them is bound to figure out that the
lock on the Kindle's text-to-speech feature is a completely boneheaded idea,
particularly for books which are not likely candidates for audiobooks (say,
Calculus 101), and allow the feature for them. As a result, those universities
will be perceived as being concerned with the rights of the visually impaired,
and doing the right thing for them, when in fact they will be doing the wrong
thing for everyone.

	Fede