[nfb-talk] new accessibility to materials

[T. Joseph Carter]

Peter,

I don't see that there is a monopoly on DTB players.  It seems that RFB&D
sells most of them, and will key any they don't sell.  Moreover, software
from independent producers has been enabled to play RFB&D books.

In theory, if I were to go out tomorrow and finish my long-ignored DAISY
player project, I could make arrangements with RFB&D to add AudioPlus
support to my software, provided that I could keep the DRM component
closed source.  I described once the technical means to do just that--a
bytecode interpreter that reads a compiled but machine-independent
library.  You could even put some protection on the back-end to control
which software were allowed to use the library.


The valid issue is the requirement for RFB&D-specific firmware.  This new
legislation doesn't necessarily make that problem go away, however the
adoption of standardized access controls on DAISY books does, since RFB&D
could theoretically transition to that standard.  One thing I hope is that
the new standard does not require a PIN every time you try to play a book.
That's just annoying.  It makes you wish the players cached the PIN or
something.


(I like how Bookshare does it better too.)


On Sun, Dec 03, 2006 at 01:47:47PM -0600, Peter Donahue wrote:
> Hello Joseph and listers,
> 
>     What they're also forgetting to is that like Bookshare.org one must be a
> registered member to borrow books in the first place and only registered
> members can use RFB&D Books so why the extra nonsense of the key? Let us
> also not forget that one must have hardware or software capable of playing
> books rendered in the DAISY Format. If they would junk that key all players
> could then access RFB&D Books and could be purchased from any vendor ending
> RFB&D's monopoly on DTB Players. Then there's the problem one faces if they
> purchase a player from a non-RFB&D source. They must then send the player to
> them to be keyed opening another ridiculous can of worms. One can only hope
> that we will benefit from this ruling and that practices like this will be
> stopped.
> 
> Peter Donahue
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "T. Joseph Carter" <tjcarter at bluecherry.net>
> To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Sunday, December 03, 2006 12:21 PM
> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] new accessibility to materials
> 
> 
> It's worth noting that electronic book isn't well defined here.  For
> example, audible.com books are DRM-encoded and that DRM could prevent them
> from being used in a lawful manner (ie, on a playback device that doesn't
> support audible.com books..)  I'd want to go and read the text of the law
> as amended before doing it, but this could make a piece of software that
> stripped out the DRM from such books legal.
> 
> The same goes for Apple's ITMS-purchased audio books, for which software
> already exists, but was illegal to use in the United States.  (Noting of
> course that ITMS is only really accessible using a Mac with VoiceOver at
> present, unfortunately, so it doesn't apply to most of us here.)
> 
> 
> I can't imagine that this means RFB&D books will no longer need to be DRM
> encoded.  The only reason I can imagine that they are now is that RFB&D
> lawyers don't believe DAISY format as an open standard does not meet the
> legal definition required to permit them to be exempt from Copyright
> restrictions.  I still wish they'd follow more the BookShare model.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Nov 30, 2006 at 12:36:34PM -0600, Steve Jacobson wrote:
> > Mike,
> >
> > I don't know if anyone tried to answer this or not.  I was hoping that
> someone with more of a legal background would do so.  However, from what I
> know, the
> > implications are that if someone publishes an electronic book that can
> only be used with inaccessible software, but if it could be accessed if the
> security could be
> > broken, this would be permitted if the user were blind.  At least at one
> time, there were some electronic books which were specifically locked up so
> screen readers
> > could not read them because the publishers felt this competed with their
> separate audio editions.  In the past, there were many difficulties with
> reading PDF
> > documents because of security settings.  While this has been resolved to
> some extent, it still occasionally happens.  I assume that this decision
> could have
> > implications there, too, but I'm no lawyer.
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