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

[Chris Friend]

Claude,

The Ambassador with the question on people with illiteracy needs was the
Ambassador to UN @@Geneva from Yemen.

Chris.


-----Original Message-----
From: a2k-admin@lists.essential.org [mailto:a2k-admin@lists.essential.org]
On Behalf Of Claude Almansi
Sent: 15 July 2009 09:59
To: a2k discuss list
Subject: Re: [A2k] WIPO Meeting the Needs of the Visually Impaired Persons
(July 13 in Geneva)

<http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2009/07/14/wipo-looks-at-mandate-on-ip-and-=
c
limate-change/>
covers the whole 2 days of this week's WIPO meeting, including a useful
account of the "Meeting the Needs of the Visually Impaired Persons" part:

"A conference on access to reading material for the visually impaired took
place on 13 July immediately preceding the public policy conference. The
topic of exceptions and limitations to intellectual property rights had bee=
n
proposed as an addition to the global challenges agenda, but concerns from
member states that it would distract from the focus on the patent system an=
d
technology development and diffusion resulted in its being placed on a
separate agenda.

Christopher Friend, strategic objective leader on accessibility at the Worl=
d
Blind Union (WBU), called for aid for the 300 million visually impaired
people =93incarcerated in a world without books=94 because only 5 percent o=
f
literature is available in an accessible format. =93How long,=94 he said,
=93before the world realises that to deny access to knowledge is to deny
people access to a basic human right?=94

Copyright restrictions create problems because it prevents organisations =
=96
usually small - working on accessible formats from sharing resources, said
Dipendra Manocha, director of the Digital Accessible Information System
(DAISY) Consortium office in New Delhi.

For example, said Friend, the popular novel Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets had 5 different English-language master copies produced in Braille
and 8 produced in DAISY Audio because copyright prevented the sharing of
those master files with other countries. The extra cost meant other books
were not made accessible.

=93In the last years we=92ve extended rights to rights holders, including i=
nto
the digital sphere,=94 said Ambassador Mario Matus of the Chilean mission t=
o
the WTO. =93But this hasn=92t happened in the same way for exceptions=85 th=
e time
has come for a treaty on visual impairment.=94

Herman Spruijt, the president of the International Publishers Association
(IPA) in Geneva said his organisation was =93willing to contribute our fair
share=94 to the effort to expand access but said that solutions must be mar=
ket
driven rather than involve copyright exceptions."

Still: can anyone complete info about the ambassador from an Arab country
(?) who said that illiteracy due to lack of educational opportunities shoul=
d
be included among reading disabilities during question time, please?

Best

Claude

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 m=
y
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 set=
s
in.
>
> =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0Fede
>
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