[Dtb-talk] DTB Here and There

[Greg Kearney]

Welcome to the world of politics, copyright law and international  
interlibrary loan.

As far as I can tell the National Library Service of the Library of  
Congress is the only library service for the disabled, outside of  
RFB&D also in the U.S., to implement system wide digital rights  
management. for digital talking books. This has prevented the  
development of NLS enabled software for computers as well. Should you  
feel strongly about this you should contact your congressional  
representatives.

The other major nations using DAISY Australia (Vision Australia,  
ABWA), New Zealand (RNZFB), Canada (CNIB), United Kingdom (RNIB and  
others), Sweden (TPB), Norway, Finland, Denmark, The Netherlands, the  
EU, Ireland, Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, India,  
Thailand, South Africa, Ghana, China both the ROC and the People  
Republic all use unprotected DAISY with MP3 audio format.

The problem this presents is in international interlibrary loan. We  
have been trying to work out how international interlibrary loan would  
work between us here in Western Australia and the Untied States and  
have yet to get any kind of an answer from Washington on this question.

Here at ABWA we employ the same cartridge media and are attempting to  
buy the same player as are used in the U.S. As it stands right now NLS  
books would have to be converted out of their  DRM format back to MP3  
audio before they could be sent to other libraries such as ourselves.  
It is interesting to learn that CNIB has access to them. I wonder who  
they are dealing with in Washington?

A few points to clear up. The decision to use DRM by the NLS was based  
on their interpretation of the law there, not a demand from  
publishers. The U.S. copyright act does not require permission from  
the publisher to record a book for the blind and disabled but does,  
unlike the Australian act, require that those books be in a "Special  
Format" which DAISY is. If they had wanted to prevent playback on all  
but DAISY devices they need only encode the books audio with random  
filenames.

On a technical level NLS books are in fact formatted in DAISY/NISO  
2002 format. Again the NLS is the only library in the world I am aware  
of that uses that particular format for books, Most use the older, but  
more universal, DAISY 2.02 or the current DIASY/NISO z3986 (2005)  
format.

As has been motioned the NLS Books do not have text with them and this  
is common in most libraries as syncing text to the playback is time  
consuming. Converting books from tape is an interesting process which  
we are doing here now. NLS has decided to generate some older books  
with no navigation at all. We break our navigation at the original  
tape level which we now call a part. Once we have the tapes digitized  
it take about 20 minutes to do the DAISY markup and then a good deal  
longer to save it out into DAISY format.

Our books here in Western Australia are done in DAISY 2.02 format with  
MP3 audio. Works in the public domain can be requested by anyone  
disabled or not. They may or may not have the full text as well.

They are made in such a way as to play not only in DAISY playback  
devices but in MP3 players such as iPods and on MP3 enable CD players.  
We provide them on NLS style media here in Western Australia or by  
download. We produce books upon demand and anyone world wide is free  
to use our service which can be found at:

http://www.guidedogswa.org/library/

If you request a copyright controlled work you should have your  
regional library ask for it from that site or consider joining our  
library service as a disabled member which will require proof of  
disability and a very small yearly fee.

I hope this was helpful in understanding the situation as it exists  
internationally.


Gregory Kearney
Manager - Accessible Media
Association for the Blind of Western Australia
61 Kitchener Avenue, PO Box 101
Victoria Park 6979, WA Australia

Telephone: +61 (08) 9311 8202
Telephone: +1 (307) 224-4022 (North America)
Fax: +61 (08) 9361 8696
Toll free: 1800 658 388 (Australia only)
Email: gkearney at gmail.com

On 12/12/2009, at 9:39 PM, Steve Matzura wrote:

> I find it very interesting that NLS is willing to produce, or have
> produced, some Daisy-formatted DTB's for Canada that they will not
> release for distro in the States.  Anybody know why this might be?
>
> Also, is there a complete listing of every NLS-distributed dtb
> released so far?  If so, then I suspect the BARD doesn't have them all
> (see above).
>
>
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