[gui-talk] Fwd: Obama Joins Group to Block Treaty for Blind and Other Reading Disabilities

[Steve Pattison]

 From:    Scott Erichsen pianoman at scotterichsen.com
 To:      vip-l vip-l at softspeak.com.au

Obama Joins Group to Block Treaty for Blind and Other Reading Disabilities

I am attending a meeting in Geneva of the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO). This evening the United States government, in
combination with other high income countries in "Group B" is seeking to
block an agreement to discuss a treaty for persons who are blind or have
other reading disabilities.

The proposal for a treaty is supported by a large number of civil society
NGOs, the World Blind Union, the National Federation of the Blind in the US,
the International DAISY Consortium, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
(RFB&D), Bookshare.Org, and groups representing persons with reading
disabilities all around the world. 

The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and export of
digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are
accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have
other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as
refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type. These
works, which are expensive to make, are typically created under national
exceptions to copyright law that are specifically written to benefit persons
with disabilities. 

The number of accessible works is very small everywhere, relative to what
"sighted" persons can read. However, in developing countries, the
collections are super small, and even in the USA, access to works in
languages other than English is practically non-existent. 

Under the current international legal regime, there is almost no sharing of
these works across borders. The treaty would change that, vastly expanding
the availability of works to all persons who are blind or have other reading
disabilities.

Every regional group in the developing world expressed support for advancing
work on this proposal, as part of a broader agenda on access to knowledge
and the protection of consumer interests. 

The opposition from the United States and other high income countries is due
to intense lobbying from a large group of publishers that oppose a "paradigm
shift," where treaties would protect consumer interests, rather than expand
rights for copyright owners. 

The Obama Administration was lobbied heavily on this issue, including
meetings with high level White House officials. Assurances coming into the
negotiations this week that things were going in the right direction have
turned out to be false, as the United States delegation has basically read
from a script written by lobbyists for publishers, extolling the virtues of
market based solutions, ignoring mountains of evidence of a "book famine"
and the insane legal barriers to share works.

Last week Obama worked with PhRMA to kill a Medical R&D Treaty at the World
Health Organization. This week he is trying to kill a treaty for blind and
reading disabled persons. This is not encouraging.

Live tweets of the WIPO SCCR negotiations use the hash tag #sccr18. My live
tweets are here: http://twitter.com/jamie_love

Source:
www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/obama-joins-group-to-bloc_b_208693.
html

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963