[BlindTlk] [Blind Android Users] Blind People Won the Right to Break Ebook DRM. In 3 Years, They'll Have to Do It Again (fwd)

Thu Oct 28 07:34:11 UTC 2021

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2021 03:19:44
From: Suhas D <ignisdraco7 at outlook.com>
Reply-To: blindandroidusers at groups.io
To: blindtech at groups.io,
    "blindandroidusers at groups.io" <blindandroidusers at groups.io>,
    chat at nvda.groups.io
Subject: [Blind Android Users] Blind People Won the Right to Break Ebook DRM. In
     3 Years, They'll Have to Do It Again

Wired <https://www.wired.com/>

10.27.2021 01:38 PM

 Blind People Won the Right to Break Ebook DRM. In 3 Years, They'll
 Have to Do It Again

Advocates will once again be granted a DMCA exception to make accessible
versions of texts. They argue that it's far past time to make it permanent.

Braille and security icons.

On Wednesday, the US Copyright Office recommended that the Librarian of Congress
once again grant a three-year exemption to break ebook DRM when needed for
accessibility.ILLUSTRATION: ELENA LACEY

 *

*IT'S A CLICH?* of digital life that "information wants to be free
<https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-at-30-hackers-and-information-wants-to-be-free/>."
The internet was supposed to make the dream a reality, breaking down barriers
and connecting anyone to any bit of data, anywhere. But 32 years after the
invention of the World Wide Web
<https://www.wired.com/story/tim-berners-lee-world-wide-web-anniversary/>,
people with print disabilities?the inability to read printed text due to
blindness or other impairments?are still waiting for the promise to be
fulfilled.

Advocates for the blind are fighting an endless battle to access ebooks that
sighted people take for granted, working against copyright law
<https://www.wired.com/tag/copyright/> that gives significant protections to
corporate powers and publishers who don't cater to their needs. For the past
year, they've once again undergone a lengthy petitioning process to earn a
critical exemption to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act
<https://www.wired.com/2016/06/hacker-lexicon-digital-millennium-copyright-act/> that
provides legal cover for people to create accessible versions of ebooks.

Baked into Section 1201
<https://www.wired.com/2016/06/hacker-lexicon-digital-millennium-copyright-act/> of
the DMCA is a triennial process through which the Library of Congress considers
exceptions to rules that are intended to protect copyright owners. Since 2002
<https://www.afb.org/blog/entry/need-access-afb-testimony-intellectual-property-law>,
groups advocating for the blind have put together lengthy documents asking for
exemptions that allow copy protections on ebooks to be circumvented for the sake
of accessibility. Every three years, they must repeat the process, like Sisyphus
rolling his stone up the hill.

On Wednesday, the US Copyright Office released a report
<https://cdn.loc.gov/copyright/1201/2021/2021_Section_1201_Registers_Recommendation.pdf> recommending
the Librarian of Congress once again grant the three-year exemption; it will do
so in a final rule
<https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2021-23311.pdf> that takes effect
on Thursday. The victory is tainted somewhat by the struggle it represents.
Although the exemption protects people who circumvent digital copyright
protections for the sake of accessibility?by using third-party programs to lift
text and save it in a different file format, for example?that it's even
necessary strikes many as a fundamental injustice.

"As the mainstream has embraced ebooks, accessibility has gotten lost," says
Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind. "It's an
afterthought."

Publishers have no obligation to make electronic versions of their books
accessible to the blind through features like text-to-speech (TTS), which reads
aloud onscreen text and is available on whichever device you're reading this
article. More than a decade ago, publishers fought Amazon
<https://www.wired.com/2014/12/e-books-for-the-blind-should-be-legal/> for
enabling a TTS feature by default on its Kindle 2 ereader
<https://www.wired.com/2009/04/visually-challe/>, arguing that it violated their
copyright on audiobooks. Now, publishers enable or disable TTS on individual
books themselves.

Even as TTS has become more common, there's no guarantee that a blind person
will be able to enjoy a given novel from Amazon's Kindle storefront, or a
textbook or manual. That's why the exemption is so important?and why advocates
do the work over and over again to secure it from the Library of Congress. It's
a time-consuming and expensive process that many would rather do away with.

"To go every three years is burdensome," says Mark Richert, executive director
at the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually
Impaired. "We are not resourced the way rights owners are. There is a disparity
in privilege and capacity. On that sort of equitable note alone, the exemptions
should be permanent."

FEATURED VIDEO

*Former Army Intel Director Breaks Down Spy Satellite Scenes From Movies & TV*
<https://www.wired.com/video/watch/technique-critique-spy-surveillance>

*Get WIRED for just $5.*
<https://subscribe.wired.com/subscribe/splits/wired/WIR_FAILSAFE?source=JNY_WIR_MPU_0_FALL_SALE_FAILSAFE_ZZ>

SUBSCRIBE NOW
<https://subscribe.wired.com/subscribe/splits/wired/WIR_FAILSAFE?source=JNY_WIR_MPU_0_FALL_SALE_FAILSAFE_ZZ>

*Most Popular*

 *

   Collage of images of greying hair and graphics of fractions
   <https://www.wired.com/story/the-mathematics-of-cancel-culture#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   IDEAS

   The Mathematics of Cancel Culture
   <https://www.wired.com/story/the-mathematics-of-cancel-culture#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   KC COLE

 *

   Asus ZenWiFi router
   <https://www.wired.com/story/best-mesh-wifi-routers#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   GEAR

   The Best Mesh Wi-Fi Routers
   <https://www.wired.com/story/best-mesh-wifi-routers#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   SIMON HILL

 *

   Apple iPhone case
   <https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-iphone-13-cases-and-accessories#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   GEAR

   The Best iPhone 13 Cases and Accessories
   <https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-iphone-13-cases-and-accessories#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   JULIAN CHOKKATTU

 *

   Grand Theft Auto III screenshot
   <https://www.wired.com/story/grand-theft-auto-3-radio-stations-commercials#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   CULTURE

   The
   <https://www.wired.com/story/grand-theft-auto-3-radio-stations-commercials#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>/Grand
   Theft Auto III/  Radio Commercials Are Still Awesome
   <https://www.wired.com/story/grand-theft-auto-3-radio-stations-commercials#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   ADE D. ADENIJI

 *

Some advocates have pushed for DMCA reform
<https://www.eff.org/document/eff-letter-dmca-senate-judiciary-subcommittee-intellectual-property-feb-11-2020> that
would weaken or negate Section 1201's copyright protections, therefore removing
the need for a triennial application process. Lawmakers held a number of
hearings reevaluating the DMCA
<https://copyrightalliance.org/trending-topics/dmca-hearings-and-legislative-reform/> last
year; they've amounted to more debate
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/disastrous-copyright-proposal-goes-straight-our-naughty-list> about
the best path forward, but there have been no material outcomes so far.

In the meantime, the situation morphed into a genuine crisis as the Covid-19
pandemic forced a worldwide exodus to digital space. Eric and Rebecca Bridges,
both of whom are blind and work as advocates for people with disabilities,
decided to homeschool their 6-year-old son last year after learning their school
district wouldn't provide accessible materials.

"The world changed," says Eric, who works as the executive director of the
American Council of the Blind. "He?s got two blind parents who can?t really
accurately review his progress. How were we going to do this?"

"The apps that our district was using were not accessible to us as blind
parents," says Rebecca, a manager at the accessibility software company TPG
Interactive. "We felt like he would really lose out ? So, we took that leap."

Although their son is sighted, the Bridges needed accessible textbooks and
worksheets to instruct him and check his work. They purchased learning materials
from three homeschooling companies, but none of them were accessible. Worksheets
that appeared totally text-based actually weren't, for example. Instead, the
files the Bridges received were just pictures of text.

It's an important distinction. Think of it this way: You can highlight any
letter or word in this article, copy and paste it, whatever. But take a
screenshot of the same text and suddenly you're left with a static image that
you can't interact with. It's the difference between a DOC file and a JPEG.
Without specific software, a computer doesn't "see" words in an image.

Rebecca resorted to a program called JAWS, which uses optical character
recognition to translate text in an image, to read her son's worksheets. This is
where the Section 1201 exemption comes in: To create an accessible version of a
copyrighted work sometimes means altering and reproducing that work in a
different format using a tool like JAWS. Without the exemption, it would
technically be illegal
<https://www.wired.com/2014/12/e-books-for-the-blind-should-be-legal/> to break
copyright protection for this purpose.

So, Rebecca handled the worksheets. But then there were the books. Rebecca asked
the homeschooling companies to provide electronic copies of the hard-copy books
she purchased for her son, so that she could access the text and instruct him.
When she got the files, she had to contend with a fresh slate of problems.

"Not a single one was a completely accessible document, and I received many,"
Rebecca says. The companies sent locked files she couldn't access and
manipulate. Or they sent poorly formatted PDFs that confused her screen-reader
software.

Even ebooks that are formatted correctly for TTS can have other issues. Math and
science are the worst. Textbooks may be formatted for 100 percent accurate
text-to-speech, only to falter when it comes to formulas, equations, charts, and
tables. Those are typically rendered as images in an ebook, which would require
publishers to take an additional step to record "alt text" for each individual
figure?audio that would describe the image once encountered by a screen reader.

*Most Popular*

 *

   IDEAS

   The Mathematics of Cancel Culture
   <https://www.wired.com/story/the-mathematics-of-cancel-culture#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   KC COLE

 *

   GEAR

   The Best Mesh Wi-Fi Routers
   <https://www.wired.com/story/best-mesh-wifi-routers#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   SIMON HILL

 *

   GEAR

   The Best iPhone 13 Cases and Accessories
   <https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-iphone-13-cases-and-accessories#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   JULIAN CHOKKATTU

 *

   CULTURE

   The
   <https://www.wired.com/story/grand-theft-auto-3-radio-stations-commercials#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>/Grand
   Theft Auto III/  Radio Commercials Are Still Awesome
   <https://www.wired.com/story/grand-theft-auto-3-radio-stations-commercials#intcid=_wired-right-rail_7ec07bc7-6120-4561-b9f5-1bf82379cc37_popular4-1-reranked-by-vidi>

   ADE D. ADENIJI

 *

This rarely happens. A screen reader instead stumbles over these static images,
sometimes reciting filename gibberish, leaving a blind reader with no possible
way to discern meaning. That's assuming, again, that an accessible version of
the textbook exists to begin with. If one does exist, it may only be available
on certain platforms.

?As the mainstream has embraced ebooks, accessibility has gotten lost.?

MARK RICCOBONO, NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

The inconsistencies can be maddening. Take /Calculus: Early Transcendentals/, a
popular textbook from the publisher Cengage Learning. The "eTextbook" available
on Amazon is actually just a straightforward scan of the book, with absolutely
no text to speech functionality. Bookshare, an accessible online library, offers
a version of the book
<https://www.bookshare.org/browse/book/2563784?returnPath=L3NlYXJjaD9tb2R1bGVOYW1lPXB1YmxpYyZrZXl3b3JkPUNhbGN1bHVzOiBFYXJseSBUcmFuc2NlbmRlbnRhbHM>,
but even that copy is not fully accessible, because it doesn't contain alt text
descriptions of those static images.

Brad Turner, VP and GM of global education and literacy at Benetech, the
nonprofit behind Bookshare, says that while his company will sometimes inject
accessible features into ebooks without the cooperation of a publisher, they
won't write their own descriptions for images.

"Our agreement with publishers is, give us your content, and we promise not to
change it at all. We?re only going to make it accessible," Turner says. "For
many of the images, graphics, charts, graphs, formulas, equations, we?re not
qualified like the author or the publisher."

Emily Featherston, director of corporate communications at Cengage, says the
company is committed to providing accessible versions of its ebooks, and that it
has "accessibility guidelines and an in-house team of digital accessibility and
learning design specialists" to support its product and tech teams. Readers who
purchase and access text through Cengage's own platform will have access to TTS
and alt text, but those features aren't guaranteed from the third parties people
may be more accustomed to buying from.

"While this work helps demonstrate our commitment to providing accessible
solutions, we also recognize that accessibility is a journey, not a destination,
and there is always room to improve," Featherston says.

That journey has been very long. Technological interventions have been available
for years?some people use tools like the Kindle Converter
<https://blindhelp.net/software/kindle-converter-v3211023387> or Codex
<https://jscholes.net/project/codex/> to cleave through digital rights
management, transforming proprietary ebooks into accessible formats?but the core
problem is actually very simple. Publishers could provide fully accessible,
digital versions of their books. They don't have to, and often they don't.

So advocates in the United States are stuck filing for an exemption to a
23-year-old law, signed a year before the founding of Napster and well ahead of
the smartphone era, when a top copyright concern was kids ripping music from
CDs. The recommendation this month to extend the copyright exemption for
accessible ebooks is good news, but the entire process will repeat in three
years.

By then, a permanent fix may be closer. In 2019, the European Accessibility Act
<https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1202> became law in the EU. It will
be enforced in June 2025
<https://vastuullinentiede.fi/en/publishing/european-accessibility-act-and-accessibility-e-books>,
requiring all ebooks published in the EU after that point to be fully
accessible. Some hope it could set a precedent here.

"We passed a seatbelt law. We passed an unleaded gas law. Why can?t we pass an
accessible book law?" Turner says.

Meanwhile, the Bridges are looking to the future?with some trepidation.

"Math is going to be nasty," Rebecca says. "There?s no doubt in my mind."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

10.27.2021 01:38 PM

 Blind People Won the Right to Break Ebook DRM. In 3 Years, They'll
 Have to Do It Again

Advocates will once again be granted a DMCA exception to make accessible
versions of texts. They argue that it's far past time to make it permanent.

Braille and security icons.

On Wednesday, the US Copyright Office recommended that the Librarian of Congress
once again grant a three-year exemption to break ebook DRM when needed for
accessibility.ILLUSTRATION: ELENA LACEY

 *