Federico Heinz: Re: [A2k] L&E and DRM/ TPMs - parking lot analogy

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
From: Federico Heinz <fheinz@vialibre.org.ar>
Date: May 3, 2009 9:31:25 AM EDT
Subject: Re: [A2k] L&E and DRM/ TPMs - parking lot analogy


On 03/05/2009, James Love wrote:
> The current DMCA exception for reading disabled persons is important,
> and useful, even if not as useful as it might be if the exception was
> broader than it is today. The various non-profit organizations that
> create accessible works can and do overcome technical protection
> measures in order to make accessible copies of works.  Without those
> accessible works, people can't read.

Not only those organizations do overcome DRM: virtually everyone does,
thanks
to the fact that DMCA did not succeed in its aim to make circumvention
devices
unavailable... only illegal to produce and distribute. So, yes, those
organizations overcome DRM, but doing so involves at least one illegal
act,
though not necessarily by them: *someone* must perform the act of
delivering a
circumvention device to them.

Part of the point I think Richard is making is that it is unwise to
spend so
much effort in removing, one by one, every pebble in reading-impaired
people's
path, when they are bound to be blocked by the same large boulder that
block
everyone.

> Why would people who are blind want to wait for you to get rid of TPMs
> before they help themselves?  That might take a long time.  The RNIB
> UK
> sometimes uses a slogan: =93Books before we are dead.=94

You are missing the point by a mile. The blind don't have to wait for
us to get
rid of DRM, but unless we do get rid of them for everyone, *we won't
be able to
help them* (unless we chose to poke our own eyes out first, a measure
some of us
would consider a bit over the top).

As for "books before we are dead", I think Richard's suggestion to
enacts laws
that force publishers to distribute accessible electronic copies of
every book
they publish, at most at the same price as the non-accessible version,
would
work much better.

=09Fede