[blindlaw] Discrimination, Copyright and Equality: Opening the Ebook for the Print Disabled

[Paul Harpur]

On 30 March 2017 my latest monograph, :”Discrimination, Copyright and
Equality: Opening the Ebook for the Print Disabled”, will be released
in Europe and the UK.  It can be found on the Cambridge University
Press website:
 www.cambridge.org/9781107119000
This monograph contributes to disability rights scholarship and legal
advocacy.  It analyses the interaction between anti-discrimination and
copyright laws, in the international human rights and copyright
jurisdictions, as well as in the national jurisdictions in Australia,
Canada, the UK and USA.  This work builds on international and
domestic notions of digital equality and rights to access information.
The core thesis of this monograph is that technology now creates the
possibility that everyone in the world, regardless of their abilities
or disabilities, should be able to access the written word.  Why then
is there still a book famine where 5% to 7% of the world’s books are
available to people with print disabilities in wealthy, advanced
economies, and less than 1% in the majority of countries?

While anti-discrimination and equality laws operate to enable access,
these laws have limited impact on the overriding impact of market
forces and copyright laws that focus on restricting access to
information.  For decades the print disabled have been denied reading
equality and have instead had their access to information limited by
legal frameworks and resource allocations that tolerated minor
exceptions to the mainstream consumption of books and information.
The recent United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (‘CRPD’), and other international developments, have
swept in a new disability politics which is altering what is expected
from laws and institutions.  The human rights paradigm has created the
possibility of achieving equality.  The challenge is to analyse
barriers to this dream of reading equality and craft laws and
institutions that open the E-Book for the world’s print disabled.

Dr Paul Harpur | Senior Lecturer
TC Beirne School of Law | The University of Queensland
Room W205, Level 2 | Forgan Smith Building | St Lucia Campus |
Brisbane Queensland 4072 | Australia
T +61 7 336 58864 | M +61 417 635 609 | E p.harpur at law.uq.edu.au | W
law.uq.edu.au/pdh

CRICOS Provider Number 00025B
This email (including any attached files) is intended only for the
addressee and may contain confidential information of The University
of Queensland. If you are not the addressee, you are notified that any
transmission, distribution, printing or photocopying of this email is
prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please delete
and notify me. Unless explicitly stated the opinions expressed in this
email do not necessarily represent the official position of The
University of Queensland.