[Dtb-talk] DTB Here and There

[Greg Kearney]

I believe the whole issue of TTS of text started up with an objection  
raised by the Author's Guild in the U.S. arguing that such was a  
"performance"' of the work that had not been authorized. It is  
interesting that in Australia to deliberately disable an accessible  
format would be illegal under the AAD act (our version of the ADA).  
This likely explains why we don't have these readers for sale down  
here yet.

I have a letter from someone at Barnes and Noble telling me that TTS  
was illegal and that was why their Mac and iPhone  book reader did not  
work with the built in screen readers on those devices. When I pointed  
out that deliberately disabling the assistive device was against the  
law here they quickly removed the player from the Australian iTune  
store and stopped communicating with me.


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 13/12/2009, at 6:54 AM, Grover Zinn wrote:

> I've been thinking for various reasons about accessibility of etexts  
> for text-to-voice and other such things (including the Amazon Kindle  
> situation).
>
> I did not know DRM was the "problem" with NLS downloads; I do know  
> that the Milestone 312 (a pretty spectacular piece of hardware with  
> the addons) will not play NLS (and they designed it this way, given  
> that they are European).  I would think that the "lockout" via  
> registration for BARD should let the NLS "control" the distribution  
> of texts in Daisy format.  With the 4track tapes, there was a bit of  
> a limitation that you have to have a 4track player, but there is no  
> way to lock the tapes (as far as I know).
>
> The "management" of etexts to prevent text to voice (see the Barnes  
> and Noble ebook web site) is interesting; is this just publisher  
> control, or is the "copyright law" on their side/ (I've done  
> copyright law for a collegiate setting, and it is complicated and in  
> some cases yet to be tested in court).
>
> A bit of a ramble.  But this is a very interesting and crucial  
> question.  Other than protecting the talking book market, what is  
> the problem???  (Profits are important to companies   :-)   )
>
> best
>
> Grover Zinn
>
> Grover Zinn
> William H. Danforth Professor of Religion, emeritus
> former Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
> Oberlin College
> Oberlin, OH 44074
> grover.zinn at oberlin.edu
>
>
>
> On Dec 12, 2009, at 5:08 PM, Steve Matzura wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:34:56 -0500, you wrote:
>>
>>> What you may have noticed or
>>> been told is NLS possibly giving RNIB access to the original DAISY  
>>> without
>>> the DRM.
>>
>> It was CNIB, but that's neither here nor there. So OK, who puts the
>> DRM on these things, and why do we need to wait until that's done
>> while other countries get it without?  This sounds remarkably like
>> buying drugs from other countries which were made in the U.S. but not
>> distributable in the U.S.
>>
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