[nfb-talk] Important: Help Keep the Blind Out Of the Literary Ghetto

[John G. Heim]

I don't know... I can believe the United States is in the hands of people 
with money but the EU and Canada? If this is such a brilliant piece of 
legislature, why is the EU against it?   And the Vatican? The Vatican is 
against helping disabled people? I guess it's possible but I'd really like 
to know exactly what the proposed rules say before I'd believe that.

There's not enough information in this article to know what we'd actually be 
pushing for if we started forwarding this message around.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Buddy Brannan" <buddy at brannan.name>
To: <nfbp-talk at yahoogroups.com>; "NFB Talk Mailing List" 
<nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 1:06 PM
Subject: [nfb-talk] Important: Help Keep the Blind Out Of the Literary 
Ghetto


> Forward this widely. Cory Doctorow is a heck of a guy.
>
> From http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/29/usa-canada-and-the-e.html
>
>
>


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USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind
people's access to written material
POSTED BY CORY DOCTOROW, MAY 29, 2009 1:52 AM | PERMALINK
Right now, in Geneva, at the UN's World Intellectual Property
Organization, history is being made. For the first time in WIPO
history, the body that creates the world's copyright treaties is
attempting to write a copyright treaty dedicated to protecting the
interests ofcopyright users, not just copyright owners.
At issue is a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and people
with other disabilities that affect reading (people with dyslexia,
people who are paralyzed or lack arms or hands for turning pages),
introduced by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay. This should be a slam
dunk: who wouldn't want a harmonized system of copyright exceptions
that ensure that it's possible for disabled people to get access to
the written word?

The USA, that's who. The Obama administration's negotiators have
joined with a rogue's gallery of rich country trade representatives to
oppose protection for blind people. Other nations and regions opposing
the rights of blind people include Canada and the EU.

Update: Also opposing rights for disabled people: Australia, New
Zealand, the Vatican and Norway.

Update 2: Countries that are on the right side of this include, "Latin
American and Caribbean region including (Uruguay, Argentina, Chile,
Jamaica) as well as Asia and Africa."

Update 3: Canada is upset with me. That's fine, I'm upset with Canada.

Activists at WIPO are desperate to get the word out. They're tweeting
madly from the negotiation (technically called the 18th session of the
Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights) publishing
editorials on the Huffington Post, etc.

Here's where you come in: this has to get wide exposure, to get cast
as broadly as possible, so that it will find its way into the ears of
the obscure power-brokers who control national trade-negotiators.

I don't often ask readers to do things like this, but please, forward
this post to people you know in the US, Canada and the EU, and ask
them to reblog, tweet, and spread the word, especially to government
officials and activists who work on disabled rights. We know that WIPO
negotiations can be overwhelmed by citizen activists -- that's how we
killed the Broadcast Treaty negotiation a few years back -- and with
your help, we can make history, and create a world where copyright law
protects the public interest.

I am attending a meeting in Geneva of the World Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO). This evening the United States government, in
combination with other high income countries in "Group B" is seeking
to block an agreement to discuss a treaty for persons who are blind or
have other reading disabilities.
The proposal for a treaty is supported by a large number of civil
society NGOs, the World Blind Union, the National Federation of the
Blind in the US, the International DAISY Consortium, Recording for the
Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), Bookshare.Org, and groups representing
persons with reading disabilities all around the world.

The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and
export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in
formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually
impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special
devices that present text as refreshable braille, 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.

Obama Joins Group to Block Treaty for Blind and Other Reading
Disabilities
COPYRIGHT EXCEPTIONS AND LIMITATIONS

Twitter feed for #sccr18

PROPOSAL BY BRAZIL, ECUADOR AND PARAGUAY, RELATING TO LIMITATIONS AND
EXCEPTIONS: TREATY PROPOSED BY THE WORLD BLIND UNION (WBU)

Pedro Paranaguá's notes in English and Brazilian Portuguese

posted in: CIVLIB ,  COPYFIGHT ,  IF YOU DON'T LIKE SOMETHING CHANGE
IT ,  INTERNATIONAL,  POLITICS




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