This isn't a new issue. George Kerscher and I wrote a major essay on the topic seven(!) years ago entitled the Soundproof Book. In it, we pointed out the irony that the first generation of ebook readers being inaccessible to blind people. This irony continues: it's a terrible shame that Amazon (and other ebook device vendors) keeps putting out ebook products that are inaccessible to the blind! More on that in another essay. The essence of the Soundproof Book essay was the dueling moral high grounds: author's rights vs. the right to access. Since these are both generally good from society's standpoint, how do you handle the conflict between them?

A coalition of organizations representing people who cannot read print will protest the removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 at the Authors Guild headquarters in NY City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, 12 to 2:00 p.m. Join us there! Manon

Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. Fair use enables the creation of new culture, and keeps current copyright holders from being private censors. With the Washington College of Law, the Center for Social Media creates tools for creators, teachers, and researchers to better use their fair use rights. Explore your fair use rights by clicking on one of the tabs above.

Creative Commons vice president Mike Linksvayer accepted the award saying, "It's an incredible honor. Creative Commons should be giving an award to the Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman, because what Creative Commons is doing would not be possible without them."

Am 29 Juni 2004 gab Flickr bekannt, dass jeder der möchte, seine Fotos bei Flickr mit einer Creative Commons Lizenz ausstatten kann. Innerhalb des ersten Jahres wurden bereits 10 Millionen Fotos mithilfe der sechs zur Verfügung stehenden Lizenzmodule veröffentlicht. Nun, im fünften Jahr nach Beginn der Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem kanadischen Fotohosting-Dienst und der gemeinnützigen Organisation Creative Commons, befinden sich bereits 100 Millionen Fotos in der riesigen Datenbank.

Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.

Software Foundation (FSF) announced the winners of the annual free software awards during the GNU/Linux conference LibrePlanet, held on March 21-22 at Harvard Science Center in Cambridge, MA. Creative Commons was honored with the Award for Projects of Social Benefit, and Wietse Venema was honored with the Award for the Advancement of Free Software. Presenting the awards was FSF founder and president Richard Stallman.

This note discusses the issue of who should benefit from a WIPO treaty for reading disabled persons. Should it only be people who are blind and visually impaired, as some propose, or should it be more inclusive with regard to other disabilities?

Welcome to Camera Obscura, the womb without a view http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/blind.html ... (skip to detailed site map)

Twitter has changed from being a tool most people thought is simply yet another way for people on the Internet to waste time to a platform for social change, social networking and dare I say it even business. One of the aspects that Twitter has been lacking is an accessible interface to the service. Thankfully Dennis Lembrée is changing all this. Schalk Neethling sat down with Dennis to learn more about Accessible Twitter, the problems he faces in creating it and what the future will hold.

Items Implemented * All links are keyboard accessible. * Simple, consistent layout and navigation. * Works with or without JavaScript. * Large default text size and high color contrast. * Looks great in high or low resolution. * Forms are marked up for optimal accessibility. * Code is semantic, light, and adheres to best practices in Web Standards.

The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education helps educators gain confidence about their rights to use copyrighted materials in developing students' critical thinking and communication skills. Check out these exciting additional resources:

It is impossible for the sites to do this. There is no way to independently identify the age and identify of minors. There is no RealID system for minors! More on the infeasibility here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/isttf Seems to me to be a major opportunity for Illinois high school educators to get your students involved in learning about the legislative process. My perspective is that the only reasonable option for Facebook, MySpace and any other social networking site would be to terminate the accounts of any minors who live in Illinois because it would be impossible for them to do this. The penalties for non-compliance would be pretty tough. Many co-sponsors. You might want to alert your students. They are the ones who would be impacted.

The blind and other readers have the right for books to be presented to us in the format that is most useful to us, and we are not violating copyright law as long as we use readers, either human or machine, for private rather than public listening.

Here's the world's shortest, fairest, and simplest licence agreement: "Don't violate copyright law." If I had my way, every digital download from the music in the iTunes and Amazon MP3 store, to the ebooks for the Kindle and Sony Reader, to the games for your Xbox, would bear this - and only this - as its licence agreement. "Don't violate copyright law" has a lot going for it, but the best thing about it is what it signals to the purchaser, namely: "You are not about to get screwed."

KEI supports the notion that the WIPO SCCR should begin it's norm setting agenda in small confidence building steps, working with communities that know what they want. The reading disabled community is at the head of the line both because they are ready now, and because they have a very compelling need. According to the World Health Organization, there are 45 million persons who are blind, and 90 percent of them live in developing countries, mostly in appalling poverty and with very limited employment opportunities.

On July 24-25, 2008, the World Blind Union and KEI convened an expert group to consider a possible treaty for blind, visually impaired and other reading disabled persons. The meeting was held in Washington, DC. There is a one page talking points memo in English, and the proposed Treaty text, as a three page memo discussing the proposal. These documents are available in English, French and Spanish, in several document formats. The English version of the proposed Treaty text is available in DAISY format from the DAISY Consortium here .

On July 24-25 2008, the World Blind Union (WBU) and KEI convened an experts meeting to consider a possible WIPO Treaty for Improved Access for Blind, Visually Impaired and other Reading Disabled Persons.

Do we need an international treaty for reading disabled persons? Yes, and today the World Blind Union is seeking international support for a proposed Treaty for Reading Disabled Persons at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The next meeting where this matter could be taken up is at the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights taking place in Geneva, May 25-29, 2009.

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