Books That Are Accessible To The Blind
(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)
With e-Book technology improving such as the recent announcement of the Amazon Kindle 2 they can now make digital books available to sight-impaired people by having the digital device read aloud, speaking every line of text. It seems like allowing people to have legally purchased digital books read aloud within their homes would be a good idea, however not everyone agrees.
From the news site Slashdot…
“The Author’s Guild claims that the new Kindle’s text-to-speech software is illegal, stating that ‘They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,’ said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. ‘That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.’ Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn’t copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person’s nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild’s claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance.”
The idea of course is that sight-impaired people should buy an audio copy of a book (if it’s available) or license the additional rights to hear the book. Reading aloud to your friend would be legal but having a device read to you may not be.
The digital age could allow equality (that blind people pay the same as the sighted and have the same range of books) but only through changes to Fair Dealing allowances in copyright law. More than that this could increase sales by making more books available to this community.
We’ve decided to add this as a possible goal for the CFF so discuss this possible goal on our forum and tell us if you agree.
February 14th, 2009 at 6:11 am
Just came across your blog on Google. Interesting post, you bring up a few good things to think about. Good luck with the blog.