[gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous posture? (was Reading Rights Coalition Denounces Random House)

Fri May 22 18:07:26 UTC 2009

If authors can't withhold the rights to text to speech we'll be able to
purchase books we can hear at the same price as the sighted.  When human
readers provide the service it adds to the price of the book necessarily.
The Kendle will have performed a service similar to scanning a book to be
read with a speech synthesizer and save us a step in the process.  This
won't cost the publisher anything more than he spends on traditional printed
texts.

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Joel Deutsch
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 11:19 AM
To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous posture? (was Reading
Rights Coalition Denounces Random House)

Dave,

I have just woken up with a major headache and am sipping my way through a 
first mug of coffee, so I'm not sure I can respond as coherently to your 
explanation as I'd like to. But I'll take a chance with saying  that there's

something in the logic of it that seems oddly like a case of apples and 
oranges. The copyright issue seems to be about something novel (the Kindle 
and other e reader devices) and not related to any other aspects of blind 
exceptions to copyright law. Through which we already have the right to have

NLS recorded books without anyone being in violation of a book's copyright 
protection or having to pay a fee for the privilege of recording it for 
those unable to read print.

As for commercial recorded books, we already have them, on CD and audio 
files such as those sold by audible.com, and there's no hassle about those, 
as recording rights are bought when they're produced. Now, I would not mind 
if . audible books all had markers in them that pertained to useful 
divisions like chapters rather than arbitrary sectioning-- a precious few 
audible books actually have chapter markers, which makes me pathetically 
grateful since someone taught me how to jump among them on my Sansa M230--  
and I wish the portable CD players and the.mp3 players could navigate these 
files at least minimally. Like by chapter. But nobody's going after the Sony

Discman or the multitude of .mp3 players that are deemed audible ready by 
audible. It's a wonder that I was able to be taught a rudimentary way to 
navigate my Sansa even so, by one person on the blind Audible list combined 
with the on site (hah! I mean 3-D) assistance of a stalwart sighted friend 
who teaches me to use many of the devices around my home by touch and 
memory.

I'm just rambling, I'm afraid. But buried in here is a real question about 
the copyright issue. Leaving blind users out of it for the moment, it has 
sounded to me as if the basic problem is that Amazon, seemingly thinking 
themselves exempt from the usual business model where a publisher has to 
sell the rights for audio in order for a book to be recorded, thinks that 
because they're accomplishing this with synthesized speech instead of using 
human readers,, they don't have to mess with the licensing arrangements. If 
it weren't for their synthesized  speech thing,they'd have to pay the 
publishers for the right to sell recorded editions of books. I'm sure they 
felt this was clever of them, but we see that it's caused an uproar, 
understandable. But my first impression, and still my impression, that 
however unfortunate this is for blind readers, and that the blind should 
indeed protest, it's the publishers and authors who are getting shaftted 
fundamentally, and why the NFB is lobbying for *them* to shut up, lie down 
and take it like good soldiers for the sake of the disabled is a little 
confusing to me. It seems to me that Amazon has invented a new scenario 
because of being able to use synthesized speech, and they shouldn't get away

with it for free. I guess I can't see all the way down the line to where 
it's supposedly a problem between the blind and American copyright law. I 
think a lot of steps are being skipped.

But maybe that's just me. Maybe I simply never have had enough coffee to 
raise my consciousness to the point it needs to be to get the logic of this.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Andrews" <dandrews at visi.com>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, May 22, 2009 2:56 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] A glitch in the righteous posture? (was Reading 
Rights Coalition Denounces Random House)

Joel:  I would say there are three reasons for the protest.  First,
there are groups in the Reading Rights Coalition who are directly
impacted now -- persons with disabilities besides
blindness.  Secondly, it is my understanding that Amazon has said
that they intend to make the device accessible to blind persons at
some point, so we are working for the future, and third, I think we
are trying to stop something by the authors before something worse
happens.  If we loose the right to use text to speech here -- what is next?

Dave

At 11:00 AM 5/21/2009, you wrote:
>I have seen a lot of discussion on this issue about the Amazon Kindle and
>the juggling of copyright law in regard to speech output. I don't wish to
>address the legal issues, either from the copyright side or the ADA side.
>But what I do wonder, repeatedly, is what all this can matter, practically
>speaking, for someone like me lacking central (macular) vision or totally
>blind, as the controls that allow use of this device are said to be
>inaccessible, I believe because they're touch-screen controls and not
>mechanical buttons whose use can be memorized by an enterprising person 
>with
>a little help from a sighted tutor, meaning a friend who will patiently
>teach the skill.
>
>For whose benefit is protest being made at this point? The partially 
>sighted
>who can read visually given enough text size and contrast, but who for some
>reason can't locate and identify the control buttons? if so, I can say 
>fine,
>no problem. But If the stated objection is without regard to the possible
>ironies and contradictions and, as such, is actually just a first step in 
>an
>anticipated battle to inspire yet a further upgrade to the Kindle that 
>will,
>this time, include blind-operable controls, that too I could understand.
>Hassle them about the copyright thing first, then, while they're busy
>fighting the NFB over that, hit them with the control inaccessibility 
>thing.
>Never having been entirely serious about the copyright issue while it was
>still moot for practical reasons to do with nonoperability.
>
>Personally, if I were to purchase a Kindle, I'd have to do all my reading 
>on
>it aided by a sighted person who could change the page display for me, like
>the page turner who stands beside the bench of a concert pianist as the
>pianist plays from his or her score. This isn't practical for me, as I have
>neither a slave or a paid assistant. So I continue to buy my commercial
>recorded books from audible. com and play the files either on my computer
>with the Jaws-friendly Audible Manager software or on my .mp3 player, which
>required two people, one blind via email and a second sighted and here with
>me, to teach me how to use well enough despite the unit's reliance on a 
>menu
>window.
>
>I hope I've posed this seeming contradiction clearly enough.
>
>thanks.
>
>
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