The following is my report from the April 7, 2009 Reading Rights Coalition demonstration in front of the NYC offices of the Authors Guild, regarding text to speech for Kindle 2.
I am in Montreal right now, and missed the Right Rights Coalition demonstration at the Authors Guild. Manon, Judit and Malini from our office are in NYC at the demonstration, and said it was incredibly moving. Several people at the protest sent reports by tweeter. The most complete was probably Abraham Lloyd. This was his account, with the Tweets organized from his first to last.
In preparation for the 3rd meeting of the WIPO Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP), WIPO published a 31 page document (CDIP/3/2) on March 18, 2009 listing a roster of consultants for technical assistance the Organization employed from January 1, 2005 to December 31, 2008. This is a welcome step in providing greater transparency into WIPO’s technical assistance activities. Continue Reading
The Authors Guild is claiming text to speech functions in software programs and e-book readers violate their copyrights, and should be turned off unless they are paid more for the extra functionality. Obviously the geniuses among the Authors Guild are on to something. There are many similar areas of functionality to be exploited by the Authors Guild. Here are some thoughts on how the Guild might squeeze more money from readers, if they want to expand upon their new anti-consumer business strategy:
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.
The Summary by the Chair of the WIPO Standing Committee Committee on the Law of Patents’ (SCP) Thirteenth Session which took place in Geneva from March 23, 2009 to March 27, 2009 has been posted on the WIPO website.
The Authors Guild is pressuring Amazon to modify the Kindle 2 so that the synthetic speech function can only be used with the express authorization of the owner of the copyright of a work. A coalition of organizations that represent or work with persons with reading disabilities is organizing a protest to persuade the Guild to change its position. KEI supports the protest, and makes this statement on the Kindle 2 issue:
As mentioned in an earlier KEI blog, on Thursday, March 19, a group of public interest groups met with the Obama administration’s trade officials. As a result of this meeting, USTR has promised to review its policies on transparency and invited groups to submit concrete proposals for evaluation. Further, these proposals are to be discussed as part of the review process in a follow up meeting next month.
Proposed areas of discussion include:
At the COMMUNIA workshop at the London School of Economics, I mentioned a legislative proposal from 1991 that was designed to open up and improve the management of government databases, promote open standards and interoperability, limit prices, and to give the public regular opportunities to engage agencies on policies. Here is a copy of the bill, from the 102nd Congress. In reading the bill, remember it was introduced in 1991, the same year the first web site was built at CERN, and three years before the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created.
In London’s, at the 5th COMMUNIA workshop held at the London School of Economics, speakers here are asked to suggest recommendations on the topic of “Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data.” Here are the 41* that have been proposed in advance, including 9 from KEI.
5th COMMUNIA Workshop:
Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data
26-27th March 2009, London School of Economics
Policy Recommendations