[nfbmi-talk] Follow-up message About Kindle, etc and FCCFW: [Writers] CVAA Stuff

Sat Feb 1 16:37:57 UTC 2014

Hello,

Here is some more information about what 1 guy is doing and his thoughts
about finding resources to fighting these kinds of cases. Just some food for
thought. 

Warm Regards,

Fred

-----Original Message-----
From: Writers [mailto:writers-bounces at explorations-in-creative-writing.com]
On Behalf Of Chris Hofstader
Sent: Saturday, February 01, 2014 9:32 AM
To: Explorations in Creative Writing
Subject: Re: [Writers] CVAA Stuff

Hi Lillian,

Eben Moglen, the attorney who has offered to help me, is doing so at no
charge. However, he's not a disability law specialist, he works on
intellectual property issues around concepts like software freedom, the
right to read, ending software patents and other sorts of things like that.
Thus, if a blind person needs legal help in these areas, he would certainly
consider helping or using his organization, SFLC, to do so. As far as I can
tell, Eben never charges for his legal work, he makes his money as a
professor, writer and the like and his efforts in the courtroom come as part
of being a professor at Columbia and not as a lawyer for hire.

There are attorneys all over the US who specialize in the broader issues
surrounding disability who also do their work on a pro bono manner. As I
only pay attention to the technology issues in any depth, I don't know who
these lawyers are or how to contact them but I'd suspect that NFB, ACB, AFB
and Lighthouses would know.

HH,
cdh

On Jan 31, 2014, at 3:51 PM, nascarlill1 <nascarlill1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi, Chris;
> Good luck to you. This attorney, is he super expensive? Does he only
handle issues relating to reading discrimination or will he help any blind
person with any kind of legal problem? Thanks. Take care.
> Lillian
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chris Hofstader" <cdh at hofstader.com>
> To: "Explorations in Creative Writing"
<writers at explorations-in-creative-writing.com>
> Sent: Friday, January 31, 2014 11:51 AM
> Subject: [Writers] CVAA Stuff
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> If you don't already know about the 21st Century Video and Communication
Accessibility Act of 2010, known more conveniently as CVAA and you have a
disability of any kind, you should take a look at the legislation. CVAA is
the single most important piece of civil rights legislation regarding
technological accessibility on Earth.
> 
> On Tuesday, the US FCC, the agency charged with making the rules for
enforcing CVAA, ruled that Amazon and Sony can have an exemption to the
accessibility requirements for their lower end book readers (devices like
the $99 Kindle book reader). This is equivalent to allowing Amazon to refuse
to sell devices to any other identifiable group like black people, women,
gay people or any other group. This is Barak Obama's corrupt FCC allowing
Amazon to hang the 21st century version of a "whites only" sign on these
products.
> 
> What makes matters even more outrageous is that Amazon has been making
book readers that are accessible at least to people with print impairments
who can hear (they never added braille support for our deaf-blind friends)
since 2009. Amazon's petition to FCC suggested they had technical
limitations which, of course, was a lie. Amazon doesn't want blind people to
have access to cheap book readers because they do not want blind people to
have access to their copy protected books. Today, you can go to BestBuy or
the Amazon web site or countless other consumer electronics outlets and buy
an Amazon book reader for about $70. Unfortunately, as a blind person, you
are only allowed to read books out of copyright (great books, Moby Dick,
Tale of Two Cities, The Rights of Man, etc.) or books by publishers who
explicitly allow Amazon to turn off the copy protection for readers with
disabilities (O'Reilly publishing gives all of its content in publication
quality files to Bookshare for instance but how many blind people care to
read serious texts about engineering issues?). Thus, blind people who want
to get one of these low cost devices are screwed out of 98% of all Kindle
content. Yes, we can use Kindle on our iOS devices but the Windows, Android,
GNU/Linux and Macintosh versions only allow for books out of copyright or
under special agreement with the publisher.
> 
> Next week, I will be publishing a blog article that reminds blind readers
that, according to Library of Congress, the federal agency tasked with
providing reading materials to people with print impairments as well as
enforcing copyright law has ruled that blind people like us can legally
crack any copy protection that prevents us from accessing any reading
materials whatsoever. I will include a link to download a Kindle crack
directly from my web site.
> 
> I will also be encouraging blind and other readers with print impairment
to take illegal action as a form of civil disobedience. I believe the right
to read is absolute, there is nothing that people with vision impairment
should be prevented from reading and that this right trumps the rights of
copyright holders to enforce copy protection. I will ask my readers to get
their hands on as much Kindle content as they can find and release it all
with the copy protection removed for anyone on Earth to read for free.
> 
> I can't think of any other way our community can punish Amazon for taking
direct action to enforce a level of discrimination against our community. If
Amazon insists that a segregationist policy is appropriate, they have taken
an immoral position and, must, therefore, be punished for this action.
> 
> Imagine, if Amazon said they would refuse to sell content to a racial
minority, I'd expect that their building would already be on fire. If it was
women against whom they were enforcing segregation, there would be 10,000
feminists blocking the doors to their offices. When the screw over the blind
community, the government (FCC in this case) permits them to do so and most
blind people just shrug and say, "accessibility has always sucked, why
should we expect change ever?"
> 
> So, I'm taking it upon myself to lead as large a civil disobedience action
by people with print impairments ever. I'll be releasing a pointer to an
illegal database (with really nice search facility including good access to
metadata) with about 150 gigabytes of books that have already been liberated
by blind people. This database is hosted outside of the US, all
communication to and from it goes through Tor so is mostly untraceable and
certainly untraceable by any agency tasked with something as minor as a
civil copyright infraction.
> 
> In the US, we blind people enjoy the Chafee amendment, the law that gives
a copyright exemption to groups like Bookshare, RFB&D, NLS, etc. As I
believe the right to read is absolute, I also want to make all of the books
available to all people with print impairment in the world, regardless of
their local laws. Yes, this is illegal and, if AG holder comes after me as
heavily as he did Aaron Schwartz for what was also a massive copyright
violation, I can technically be thrown into federal prison.
> 
> As cracking copy protection is, as I mention above, perfectly legal in the
US and as our first amendment protects free speech, I may not actually be
breaking an US laws as I'm not hosting or giving away the copyrighted
materials, I'm just encouraging people to take civil action against Amazon
which is protected free speech.
> 
> I've already been offered the services of the amazing lawyer, Eben Moglen
(his resume is awesome, look him up on Wikipedia for the details). Eben is
the founder of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) based at Columbia
University where he is a fully tenured professor. While he's highly
confident I won't run into any actual legal problems, he has offered me his
personal services plus those of SFLC and what he describes as an "army" of
Ivy League law students just in case Amazon decides to harass me with bogus
but potentially expensive legal claims.
> 
> One bit of Eben's history, after he clerked for Thurgood Marshall and went
to work teaching at Columbia, he filed the first ever Internet accessibility
lawsuit. He's not only a software freedom and civil rights guy, he has
specific experience in working on legal issues with blind clients.
> 
> So, that's what I'm rocking on this week.
> 
> HH,
> cdh
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