access to knowledge
Internet Governance Forum
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was a product of the WSIS-Tunis Agenda and was given a fairly open-ended and ambiguous mandate.
People vs. Authors Guild
When Amazon released the Kindle 2 electronic book reader on February 9, 2009, the company announced that the device would read e-books aloud using text-to-speech (TTS) technology. Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2.
Terms of Protection for Copyright and Related Rights in multilateral treaties
To provide some context to discussions on the term of protection for copyright and related rights, the following note sumarizes on the basic provisions in various multilateral copyright and related rights treaties, on the topics of minimum terms and formalities. This does not include provisions in bilateral and regional trade agreements, such as NAFTA, the US/AU FTA, or the several EU FTA and other agreements.
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.
Open Access
July 21, 2009. KEI letter to Senators John Cornyn and Joseph Lieberman co-signed by IP Justice (IPJ), Essential Action, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM) and OXFAM America to express their appreciation for sponsoring the 2009 Federal Research Public Access Act (S.1373). This legislation would extend, improve and make more permanent an earlier open access initiative involving NIH funded research.
WIPO publishes agenda for Information Meeting on Developments in Broadcasting (25 May 2009)
Submitted by thiru on 23. May 2009 - 4:46WIPO has published the program of the “Information Meeting on Developments in Broadcasting Provisional Program” (SCCR/18/INF/2 Prov.) which will take place on Monday, 25 May 2009.
Kindle 2 vs Reading Disabled Students
Submitted by Meredith Filak on 13. May 2009 - 16:25Update #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:
