By David Kravets on Wired magazine’s ‘Threat Level’ blog:

The Obama administration has announced its support for a proposed international treaty that would loosen copyright restrictions to make accessible reading material available across borders.

The administration’s position, announced at a subcommittee of the World Intellectual Properties Organization in Geneva, places it squarely in opposition to  American business interests, including software makers, book publishers, and motion picture and music companies.The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has argued that the plan could promote internet book piracy.

Advocates for people who are blind or have other reading disabilities have promoted the proposed treaty, which would allow the cross-border sharing of digitized books without payment to the publisher.

Many nations have copyright exemptions that allow nonprofit companies to market copyrighted works in accessible formats without permission, but not across international borders. The formats make it possible for tens of thousands of people with print disabilities to access books with the help of devices that convert text to speech or Braille.

See also:

Copyright Owners Fight Plan to Release E-Books for the Blind — Wired

Earlier posts here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 12:32 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, Obama administration, blindness/visual impairments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.