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.
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 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:
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
Patents and Standards
The United States thanks the International Bureau for preparing the background paper on Standards and Patents, and we support the statement made by Germany on behalf of Group B.
Mr. Chairman, the United States supports and strongly encourages the use of open standards, as traditionally defined, that is, those developed through an open, collaborative process, whether or not intellectual property is involved.
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… Continue Reading
As mentioned in James Love’s blog today entitled Notes from Day One of WIPO SCP 13, the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP) is examining four key issues at its Thirteenth Session this week including Standards and Patents, Exclusions from Patentable Subject Matter and Exceptions and Limitations to the Rights, The Client-Attorney Privilege and Dissemination of Patent Information.
This note discusses the issue of who should benefit from a WIPO treaty for reading disabled persons. Should it only be people who are blind and visually impaired, as some propose, or should it be more inclusive with regard to other disabilities?
The following are some of the stories on the denial of the ACTA FOIA request on national security grounds.
March 12, 2009
https://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/03/12/acta-state-secret/
Obama Administration Rules Texts of New IPR Agreement are State Secrets
Huffington Post, James Love, March 12, 2009.
Over the weekend, I looked at a small section of one of my bookshelf at home.
As in my previous blog, I wrote down the titles and author names for all of the books, and then checked on Bookshare.org to find out what is actually available for reading disabled persons. For purposes of this survey, I considered all books on Bookshare of “fair or above quality” (the lowest of 4 categories that include publisher’s quality, excellent and good), as “being available.”