[Dtb-talk] What good is a standard.

[Steve Jacobson]

Greg,

I sense you are feeling a good deal of frustration and I am sympathetic to that.  At the same time, I don't completely understand your frustration.  There is nothing that 
I can see in a standard that should require any entity distributing materials to distribute all materials produced using a given standard.  What the standard does buy us 
is the greater liklihood that materials can be exchanged when needed between agencies and the consumer can purchase less software and hardware to play 
materials.  This seems to be happening as hoped, even if not fast enough.

In the particular cases that you mentioned, both NLS and RFBD are committed to using some degree of copy protection so that they can satisfy publishers concerns 
that the materials are used only by those allowed to receive the service.  This means that their respective brands of copy protection is a part of their infrastructure.  
For either of them to comply with Apple's wishes of no Digital Rights Management, they would have to handle the material separately.  If Apple were to agree that 
they could use whatever encryption and copy protection they use for other materials, one would have to ask why NLS or RFBD should expend the effort if the book 
is available from other sources as this will surely be.  Also, right or wrong, both NLS and RFBD do like to control the materials they produce.  In their minds, I imagine 
they want consistency of quality and formatting.  Whether or not one feels they are being rigid, it does not have much to do with the value of a standard as I see it.  
Even though I know you likely produce a high quality product, there is nothing that guarantees the general quality of products because they are produced using a 
given standard.

As a blind consumer, I certainly don't expect that I should be able to go to any source and get every book in a given format.  There are some master catalogs that 
can save me some checking, but I assume that you will widely publicize where this manual can be retrieved, and we can certainly distribute announcements like that 
to a number of our lists as I believe we already have.  We're also getting used to BookShare being a sort of catch-all for some of these materials, and it also seems 
reasonable for us to look for 
this book on Apple's web site.  Maybe there needs to be a central place to store texts that can be distributed without restrictions and where a membership fee is not 
required.  This is probably a topic worth considering.  It just doesn't seem to me that your experiences invalidates the usefulness of a standard.  I hope I have not 
misunderstood your point.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Thu, 8 Nov 2007 12:19:55 -0700, Greg Kearney wrote:

>In the last few days I have run into an issue which would seem to  
>strike at the very heart of DAISY as a standard.

>I produced for Apple the VoiceOver Getting Started Guide. This short  
>book is, in effect the user manual for Apple's screen reader. I  
>generated this in DIASY 2.02 and DAISY/NISO 2005. It is fully valid,  
>full text and full audio with images.

>Apple wants this book distributed as widely as possible and with that  
>in mind we offered it to the NLS, RFB&D and any other organization and  
>library service who wanted it. You may recall the posting here,. All  
>that Apple asked was that no digital rights management be placed on  
>the copies.

>The response we got back was puzzling to say the least. We have been  
>informed by several entities that they do not accept books produced by  
>others. To me this raises the question of what good is a world-wide  
>standard for digital talking books if in the end entities are going to  
>refuse to accept books from any source other than themselves. Does not  
>such policies fly in the face of our efforts to produce an  
>international standard.

>Anyway if there are libraries or agencies that want to distribute this  
>title they are free to do so here is the link:http://w3.wmcnet.org/dtbmaker/books/vogs/

>In addition if you have a Solutions Radio or similar device that can  
>play DAISY directly from an online source you can point it tohttp://w3.wmcnet.org/dtbmaker/books/voiceover/ncc.html 
>  and get it as well.

>If your organization does decide to offer this book would you please  
>drop me a line and let me know.

>Greg Kearney
>535 S. Jackson St.
>Casper, Wyoming 82601
>307-224-4022
>gkearney at gmail.com


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