In a 2002 article on "The Soundproof Book," George Kerscher and Jim Fruchterman explored the exclusionary impact of books with text-to-speech disabled.* In 2008, Amazon began to disable text-to-speech in thousands of Kindle editions of ebooks. Below are examples of the new Amazon soundproof books.
[*George Kerscher and Jim Fruchterman, "The Soundproof Book: Exploration of Rights Conflict and Access to Commercial EBooks for People with Disabilities," First Monday, Volume. 7, Number 6 – 3 June 2002.]
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A google search using the term: “Text-to-Speech: Not enabled” site:www.amazon.com today gives 13,500 hits. On May 17, 2009, the same search gave 343 hits.
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These are the final conclusions of SCCR 18.
World Intellectual Property Organization
SCCR Eighteenth Session
Geneva, May 25 to 29, 2009
CONCLUSIONS OF THE SCCR
prepared by the Chair
Limitations and exceptions
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Original at: https://tacd.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/TACD-IP-07-09-IP-Aspects-of-Pandemics.pdf Resolution on Intellectual Property Aspects of Pandemics DOC No. IP 07-09 DATE ISSUED: May 2009 Introduction In recent years there have been several cases of possible new pandemics of infectious diseases. This includes recently concerns about SARS,… Continue Reading →
Several people are reporting from the WIPO SCCR 18 meeting on Twitter. Some but not all use a hash tag #sccr18, for those familiar with the twitter search system. Below are the 60 tweets I posted so far.
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On Monday, 25 May 2009, the governments of Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay submitted a proposal to the to the 18th Session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) entitled, “Proposal by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, relating to Limitations and Exceptions: Treaty proposed by the World Blind Union (WBU)”. Continue Reading →
On 13-14 May 2009, representatives from 10 Latin American and Caribbean governments, representatives from blind organizations and nongovernmental organizations met in Montevideo (Uruguay) to analyze the World Blind Union (WBU) proposal for a WIPO treaty for the blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons.
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This is the statement that the government of Bolivia delivered today to the 62nd World Health Assembly at the conclusion of the discussions on the Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (WHA 61.21).
Statement of Bolivia on resolving outstanding elements of agenda item 12.8
Joint Statement on behalf of
Bangladesh, Barbados, Bolivia and Suriname, and
Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela
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The WHA will take up the WHA IGWG resolution at 9AM on Friday.
When discussing the issue of excluding the WHO from discussions about a medical R&D treaty, one PhRMA lobbyist told me “this was put to bed long ago.” He was in part referring to a WHO “green room” meeting that was organized before the Obama inauguration. One negotiator said the pharmaceutical companies are pressing hard to kill the medical R&D treaty here “before the new people take over.”
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21 May 2009
Today at the World Health Assembly (WHA) the US and EU are opposing that the WHO have a mandate on global research and development norms, including the possibility for Member States to negotiate at WHO a global biomedical R&D treaty.
Developing countries governments made very strong interventions this morning on this issue (among them India, Bolivia, Barbados, Suriname, Bangladesh, Ghana, Argentina, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Cuba and Jamaica) and are wondering where are the promises of multilateralism made by the new Obama administration.
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