[A2k] WIPO Meeting the Needs of the Visually Impaired Persons (July 13 in Geneva)

[Seth Johnson]

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 Claude Almansi <claude.almansi@gmail.com>:
> 2009/7/13 Federico Heinz <fheinz@vialibre.org.ar>:
> > On 13/07/2009, Claude Almansi wrote:
> >> However, when Federico Heinz asked him about publishers disabling
> >> text-to-speech in Kindle texts, he answered that Amazon had
> >> forgotten to negotiate the "audio rights".
> >
> > Later, talking with him in the lobby, I told him that was a lame
> > answer, that audio rights might have been needed if Amazon had
> > distributed a recording of the sound-to-speech output, but were not
> > needed in this case: if I purchase a book, I don't need audio right
> > to read it aloud to my children, and neither do I need audio rights
> > to get my computer to read it aloud to them.
> >
> > After that exchange, he admitted that publishers were fighting a
> > lost cause there, and that it was just a matter of time until
> > common sense sets in.
>
> Thanks for the update, Federico: even the Swiss delegate to WIPO said
> to me in the corridors during the SCCR meeting in May that disabling
> TTS in the Kindle was a lost cause.
>
> These more lucid copyright defenders are in an awkward in-between
> position: they can't very well tell publicly their more strident
> companions that thinking they can emulate the Little Dutch Boy and
> save the present copyright dam by sticking their pinkies in its holes
> is delusional. Let's hope they do so when they are among themselves -
> for the sake of access to knowledge AND of the authors' right to
> compensation for their work.


If common sense prevails in the sense described, it would serve the
broader opposition to "DRM" as much as the interests of the
reading-disabled.

But I think the tendency to keep waiting for a technical solution still
prevails, and probably better explains the motivations of the strident
"copyright defenders."  If ACTA is about enforcing palladiated computers
under the rubric of anti-counterfeiting, their hopes are still in play
and are reflecting a technically feasible scheme.


Seth