Book publishers try to bilk the blind
Virtually all American companies tied to publishing books either on paper or electronically are fighting a proposal by the World International Property Organization to allow countries to share books that are in electronic format to be used by the blind. According to to the companies, the sharing of documents amounts to stealing their works even though these works have been paid for and were made available to libraries and other organizations that make them available to the public. The companies further complain that this treaty would diminish existing laws that protect the works from being pirated or otherwise stolen. The proposal would free up thousands of books to millions of blind people for little or no cost. The largest catalog belongs to the Library of Congress which has almost 500,000 titles that are available in universal Daisy format which includes both paper and digital braille. The books have been converted to braille by federal grants and donations and as such the publishers have been paid for their works. However, people cannot access books outside their borders such that bind people in the United States cannot gain access to books in Canada. The treaty would allow the blind to easily access all books that have been converted to braille regardless of where they are located. (Source: Wired Magazine)
It is sad that these companies are fighting to keep books out of the hands of disabled people across the globe. We all know that knowledge is power and that the better educated a person is t he easier time it will be to find a good job or continue in college. By tightly controlling what books are available to the blind, they are deciding what books the blind should read. The individual no longer has control over what materials they have access t, instead large corporations decide that and put whatever price tags for entry on these products so they can control the disabled. The Library of Congress, Google and the Gutenberg Project all pay the publishers to convert the books into electronic format so that they will be available to many people including those using electronic book readers and the blind. Those works are then placed in public libraries so that they are available to everyone. Evidently the book publishers believe that libraries are really large groups involved in stealing all of their works by making them available to everyone without charging them a fee.
The disabled are usually at the bottom of the economic ladder, trying to live off of Social Security Disability payments and eking out a life for themselves and their families. Most do not have money to purchase books at $15-$50 a pop, especially for technical or college texts. By making these available in formats like Daisy the blind can keep up with the latest trends and make themselves useful to the market for jobs. By locking them out of millions of titles available around the world you lock them out of works that everyone who is not disabled can access. This creates a group of underserved that can only access what companies deem they need to read rather than letting the consumers make that decision. What books and literature should we not allow the blind to read? How about the Jewish population or African Americans? Are we hiding books that show how the have been systematically discriminated against? Is this how we keep the disabled from ever moving up the economic food chain?
The fight against allowing people to read what they want is a scary idea that needs to be stopped. The free press needs to publish stories on what is happening to the blind so that advocacy groups can step in to protect the rights of the disabled in the United States and Europe. Wile you finish this article, think about what books you should not be allowed to read by corporate america.
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