Tuesday, June 9, 2009

The Global Push For Book Access

Geneva, Switzerland -- A persistent international shortage of books and other material adapted for visually-impaired people has led to a push in Geneva for a global treaty that would also mesh with U.S. efforts to address the problem. Technologies exist to overcome the disparity, but access continues to be limited by economic and legal arguments related to copyright, and the situation is even worse in developing countries. "There is no longer any technical reason that could bar a blind person from reading a book," Dan Pescod of the Royal National Institute for the Blind told the U.S. Copyright Office in a May 18 hearing.

That hearing was part of a consultation on the issue launched by the Copyright Office, which also included written submitted comments. Central to the consultation, according to the March 26 Federal Register notice, is a treaty on access for the visually impaired proposed by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay in late May at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The proposed WIPO treaty, the subject of domestic consultations by governments in the coming months until the next WIPO copyright committee meeting, would create rules for import and export of works in accessible formats.

The reasons for a new global instrument, according to Manon Ress of Knowledge Ecology International, include: "The legal uncertainly over cross-border sharing of works, the very limited role of voluntary licensing of works, the recent disabling of text to speech by all Random House owned e-books, the enormous inefficiencies of making duplicative accessible format versions of works, and the paucity of works available to reading disabled persons, particularly in developing countries, or in foreign languages." Read CongressDaily's "Issue Of the Week" feature here.