[Missouri-l] FW: [leadership] Fw: [coataccess] Obama joins group to block treaty for blind and other reading disabilities Huffington Post, May 28, 2009 James Love

[Peter Altschul]

Hi,
This comes from the Reading Rights Coalition, and has to do with
access to book content in alternative formats.

They are requesting that calls be made this afternoon or tonight to
contacts in the White House, as negotiations will resume in the
morning.

It may be helpful to forward to Susan Crawford, Careme Dale, and any
other contacts at the White House.
Best,
Mika Pyyhkala
Association of Blind Citizens
Tel/SMS: (617) 202-3497
http://twitter.com/pyyhkala
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-love/obama-joins-group-to-bloc_b_208693.
html

Obama joins group to block treaty for blind and other reading
disabilities Huffington Post, May 28, 2009 James Love

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 [See:
http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/05/27/brazil-ecuador-paraguay/] 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 number of accessible works is very small everywhere, relative to
what "sighted" persons can read. However, in developing countries,
the collections are super small, and even in the USA, access to works
in languages other than English [see:
http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/04/22/access2foreign-works/] is
practically non-existent.

Under the current international legal regime, there is almost no
sharing of these works across borders. The treaty would change that,
vastly expanding the availability of works to all persons who are
blind or have other reading disabilities.

Every regional group in the developing world expressed support for
advancing work on this proposal, as part of a broader agenda on access
to knowledge and the protection of consumer interests.

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.

Last week Obama worked with PhRMA to kill a Medical R&D Treaty [See:
http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/05/22/wha-rnd-treaty/] at the
World Health Organization. This week he is trying to kill a treaty
for blind and reading disabled persons. This is not encouraging.

Live tweets (on Twitter) of the WIPO SCCR negotiations use the hash tag
#sccr18.
(authors live updates via Twitter)
http://twitter.com/jamie_love
--
James Love, Director, Knowledge Ecology International
http://www.keionline.org | mailto:james.love at keionline.org
Wk: +1.202.332.2671 | US Mobile +1.202.361.3040 | Geneva Mobile
+41.76.413.6584

---
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