reading disabilities

"Who on earth would oppose a treaty to facilitate access to information and knowledge to people with reading disabilities?"

I am often asked "who on earth would oppose a treaty to facilitate access to information and knowledge to people with reading disabilities?" Please read my selected quotes from the comments posted today on the Copyright office page here. But I would also like to highlight some really positive and supporting comments about the treaty. There are more of them than the negative ones but do they have the same weight?

Copyright Limitations & Exceptions, and User Rights

KEI's work on limitations and exceptions to the exclusive rights of copyright owners covers a wide range of issues, in many different fora. KEI has worked on reading disabilities, education, libraries, the relationship between copyright L&E and technical protection measures or DRM technologies, the scope of fair use, and rights of creative communities to reuse and re-purpose works, access to out of print or orphaned works, compulsory licensing of copyrighted works, the control of excessive pricing, and limits on the use of contracts that undermine user rights.

2009 Proposal by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, Relating to Limitations and Exceptions: Treaty Proposed by the World Blind Union

On May 25, 2009, Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay (BEP) submitted a formal proposal at the WIPO SCCR 18, asking that the SCCR consider a proposal for a treaty that was presented to the SCCR in 2008 by the World Blind Union. Below is the text of the BEP paper:

WIPO STANDING COMMITTEE ON COPYRIGHT AND RELATED RIGHTS
Eighteenth Session Geneva, May 25 to 29, 2009

Text to Speech - Misc Links

The main coalition addressing the text to speech issue is the Reading Rights Coalition.

May 19, 2009. KEI Statement on Random House decision to turn off text to speech in ebooks.

April 10, 2009. James Love, People vs the Authors Guild, don't turn off text to speech in Kindle 2, Huffington Post.

Tweets from Fordham/Cambridge event, Wed, April 15

These were my tweets yesterday from the Fordham/Cambridge IPR event:

# Fordham event in Cambridge, UK. Michael Keplinger from WIPO said treaty for reading disabled “would take years and not solve the problem”

# At Fordham/Cambridge IP event, Luc Devigne of DG Trade says ACTA membership will be “enlarged,” become standard for developing countries.

Growing Opposition to the Authors’ Guild Request to Remove Text-to-Speech on Kindle2

The groups below represent 15 million Americans who cannot read print because of blindness, dyslexia, spinal cord injury and other print disabilities. Reading disabled persons affected by the Authors’ Guild request to remove the text to speech function on Kindle 2 include school children, the elderly, professionals, university students, returning veterans, and yes, your neighbors, family members and friends.

Syndicate content