[Ecommerce] FYI: Techdaily on the American Foundation for the Blind seeking exemption for e-books

[Manon Anne Ress]

Techdaily May 2, 2003
Advocate For Blind Seeks Legal Exemption For E-Books
by Drew Clark

A representative from the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) on 
Thursday recommended an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright 
Act (DMCA) so that visually impaired individuals have greater access to 
readings of lawfully acquired e-books.

In a hearing before five Copyright Official officials, AFB Vice 
President of Government Relations Paul Schroeder said that because the 
1998 law empowers publishers to block the "text to speech" feature of 
e-books, the Library of Congress should make it legal for the blind to 
circumvent such access controls.

But Alan Adler, vice president of the Association of American 
Publishers, opposed the exemption, saying that the visually impaired 
enjoy other exemptions from copyright law, including a 1996 law 
permitting nonprofit or governmental agencies to make recordings of works.

Moreover, Adler and Robert Bolick, representing the publisher 
McGraw-Hill, said the proposed exemption would create a "chink in the 
armor" of the DMCA, which prohibits individuals from circumventing 
anti-piracy protections like encryption. "With that chink in the armor, 
some publishers would back off" from making e-books because publishers 
rely on the DMCA to protect them from being pirated, Bolick said.

But Schroeder said visually impaired people suffer because they 
frequently do not know whether a publisher has disabled the 
text-to-speech feature of digital books. "Are we expected to simply pay 
our money up front in the vain hope that sometimes we will be allowed to 
read?" Schroeder wrote in the filing in which he proposed his exemption.
"We believe this was not the intent of Congress," he continued. "We urge 
the librarian to reaffirm the long history of copyright law and rulings 
which explicitly affirm the right of persons who are blind or visually 
impaired, as well as those providing reading matter to them, to 
repurpose content into accessible formats, including such content as may 
be secured by digital means."

Adler said few publishers disable text-to-speech features or other 
"screen reader" capabilities. But Jonathan Band, a Morrison & Foerster 
attorney representing library associations, said those that do create a 
real hardship.
"Let's say that 95 percent [of e-books] are screen-reader enabled," Band 
hypothesized. "That means that the likelihood [of the exemption] harming 
publishers is truly infinitesimal, but for a blind college student who 
needs one of those books that is one of those five percent, he is very 
adversely affected."

Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters pressed Schroeder on the extent 
of harm caused by the DMCA, suggesting that in promoting e-books, 
companies might have stimulated more content for the blind. "Aren't you 
better off than you were before e-books started to grow?" she asked.

He replied that the text-to-speech features have put blind people closer 
to a much better world. "It is a bit like water in the desert," he said. 
"We believe we have the opportunity to do what all of you take for 
granted: to go into Borders to find the books you want in any number of 
formats."

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Manon Anne Ress
Consumer Project on Technology
www.cptech.org
PO Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036
manon.ress@cptech.org, voice: 1.202.387.8030, fax: 1.202.234.5176