Nowadays, the people who control the distribution of art on a larger scale, have nothing to do with its creation.

@Kthx for the info, I was thinking about Luther and all that. Silly me. :P

Epic win! It’s nice to see a problem that started this morning, resolved in the end of the day.

And I do read the Greek/Hebrew as much as possible. :-)

http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/sccr_18/sccr_18_5.pdf

http://www.vaticanlibrary.va/

Wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_library

…their people may have some comments to add which may be of value to the discussions.

DAISY is the global standard media type for accessible versions of books. We already have a copyright exemption for this format in the U.S. (referred to in the generic as a format for people with print impairments blah blah blah). What WBU and others want is to extend the exemption uniformly to other countries so they can create efficient megaglibraries, or even just efficient search and download, for blind and dyslexic people.

You won’t see DAISY books in the mainstream, but that’s part of what the publishers are worried about (or that tools might be used to strip the audio out of DAISY books to make MP3 versions). DAISY does not have a standard DRM though various systems exist for different libraries. The other part is just simple greed. They want to protect any possible revenue from the conventional recorded audio versions of books. See DAISY.org for info on the file format.

Bruce COUCHMAN, Senior Legal Analyst, Copyright and International Intellectual Property Policy Directorate, Department of Industry, Ottawa

Drew OLSEN, Director, Legislation and and Negotiations, Copyright Policy Branch, Deparment of Canadian Heritage, Ottawa

Darren SMITH, Second Secretary, Permanent Mission, Geneva

I believe you have mistaken James Love‘s intentions. AFAICT, he is reporting from the WIPO meeting..

@Brooklyn,
Nowadays, the people who control the distribution of art on a larger scale, have nothing to do with its creation.”

That is a problem with contract law, not copyright. From the moment something is created (save when the creator is working while under contracts that claim ownership of their work) the work is copyrighted to the creator. That’s as it should be.

I am actually interning currently at the OHCHR for the committee on the rights of persons with disabilities, and have been assisting to draft a copy of the reporting guidelines for ratifying nations. I would be very interested in seeing if there is a chance to include a statement about this in the document and will mention it to the secretariat. If anyone has further suggestions i can be reached here.

crpd-intern@ohchr.org

thanks!

It’s been my experience that NO problems in this world are as simple and straight forward as this article would make it seem.
I would suggest that anytime you read an internet story that makes you want to grab your torch or pitchfork and then storm the castle gates … it’s usually a good idea to take a deep breath and do a little more reading first.

I’m not saying there IS a valid explanation for this … but this article seems pretty inflammatory.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go sharpen my pitchfork.

Cory, do you have a reference for the statement above that the NZ Govt opposed the treaty?

LoC Special Services for the Blind has fewer than 1 million clients, and likely has very little impact on Books on Tape profits for publishers and authors like Hillary Clinton. But that “very little” imact was enough for Clinton to hold up LoC. I guess it takes every dime and nickel for her to make her million$.

In the preamble and a few other places the treaty refers to “blind, visually impaired, and other reading disabled persons” but in virtually all the places that are legally relevant it only talks about those who are visually impaired. The sighted print disabled such as those who have a physical disability which prevents them holding a book or turning the pages, and those with perceptual disabilities such as dyslexia, are basically ignored through all the parts of the draft treaty which matter.

As a sighted print disabled person (I can’t hold a book because of physical disability) and one who has 4 severely dyslexic family members this worries me a lot. I fully support everything this treaty talks about but it should NOT be limited to those whose print disability is caused by lack of sight!

It doesn’t help society to support IP regime of this nature. Intellectual Property holders play a deadly game and should be held responsible for the truly criminal consequences of their profit-seeking acts.

Can someone explain why there needs to be a special treaty for this?

Whose balls are we after again?

Copyright should protect the owner of the copyright. THEY CREATED THE WORK. (Or inherited the rights from the person/s who created the work.)

There is a rampant sense of entitlement these days, where people feel they deserve access to an artist’s work, even without the artist’s permission. And this is a perfect example of that. You’ve pitted the most sympathetic group against those big bad… uh, people who made stuff and want to maintain control over the stuff they created.

I’m ALL for more audiobooks being produced and more large print books, and other things that will help handicapped people read what they want to — but not at the expense of the writers/artists who created it.

Example, Kindle’s ability to block text to speech by author request. Some authors are utilizing this feature, like Stephen King and Maya Angelou. I don’t LIKE that they disabled their text to speech, but they have. It’s their work, it’s their decision to make. If they feel it cuts into the sales of audiobooks or just dislike the way the voice on Kindle sounds and want to select actors/speechmakers of their choosing — it’s their work and they should have a right to control how the work is presented.