[blindlaw] Obama administration opposes treaty to protect rights of print disabled

[Angie Matney]

A blog post concerning the proposed WIPO treaty to protect the reading
rights of blind and people and people with disabilities, and on the Obama
Administration's opposition to it. There are also some interesting links on
the web site,m at the bottom of the post. I am only including the text of
the post.

 

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/29/usa-canada-and-the-e.html

 

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 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.