Update #2, 15 May: Yesterday, Random House began to disable TTS on books in the Kindle store, which is our primary concern. However, it appears that early reports from the Amazon message boards of remote disabling may have been inaccurate; there have been no confirmed reports of TTS being remotely disabled, and we apologize for any confusion. However, the technology to remotely disable these works does exist, and this remains a significant concern.

Two major points to bear in mind as this story progresses:

Every three years, the Library of Congress solicits public proposals for new (and renewable existing) exemptions from the anti-circumvention provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. On May 1, and May 6-8, the Library of Congress’s Copyright Office will hold its triennial rulemaking session on the anti-circumvention provision of the DMCA, where they will host panel discussions on the 2009 proposed exemptions.

KEI recently submitted comments to the US Copyright Office regarding the upcoming Treaty for the Blind. One element of those comments was a test of the availability of books in reading-accessible format.

On April 9, 2009, Peter Brantley from the Internet Archive gave a talk at KEI on the proposed “Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement.” The following are my rough notes from the presentation.

Peter has been a director of the Internet Archive (IA) for about three weeks. He was accompanied by Will Rodger, a Managing Director of the Law Media Group (LMG), a firm that represents Microsoft and the IA on the Google Books settlement. Attending the event were the following persons: