[access-uk] Author's guild: Here we go again

From: Gordon Keen <gordonkeen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: access-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:22:21 +0100

Remember the furore over text to speech being turned off in the kindle? Well
it seems that students with disabilities are being held up as copyright
pirates by this group of paranoid scribblers now.

http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/file-scanning-service-1dollarscan-causes-fear-of-piracy/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=file-scanning-service-1dollarscan-causes-fear-of-piracy

File Scanning Service 1DollarScan Causes Fear of Piracy

On the surface, the concept behind San Jose-based file scanning company
1DollarScan is both simple and practical. Send a piece of print material to the
company, and upon signing the user agreement and making payment, the company
will send back a PDF of the material sent. This is an ideal service for
companies with large volumes of documents that need to be stored, newspapers or
magazines that want their pre-digital back issues archived, or even students
with disabilities who need some obscure print material turned into a more
user-friendly and accessible edition.

But the Authors Guild is voicing its concern over 1DollarScan’s new partnership
with Evernote, which will allow users to access their digitized editions of
print materials in the cloud, sparking some very real concerns over potential
piracy. Despite the signed agreement from 1DollarScan that clearly states this
PDF file cannot be shared—and everyone knows how ebook pirates follow the
rules—the risk of individuals using the scanning service to create digital
editions of out of print books and print-only bestsellers. (Envision how much
easier it would have been to pirate the Harry Potter series, assuming someone
hadn’t actually used a file scanning service.)

Ordinarily, it would be common sense that if a consumer mailed a print copy of
a book to 1DollarScan for digitizing, the company would return the material
with an explanation that this work is copyrighted. However, that isn’t the
case. 1DollarScan has always operated under Fair Use, basically saying that a
consumer has the right to have a different version of the material for his own
use as part of the purchase price of the book. Now, with the online
capabilities of cloud-based storage, the authors’ concerns seem to take hold.

Publisher’s Weekly reached out to both Paul Aiken, head of the Authors Guild,
and to Hiroshi Nakano, CEO of 1DollarScan, for comments on the issue. Their
statements can be found HERE.

Mercy Pilkington (677 Posts)
Mercy Pilkington is a young-adult author and a teacher in a correctional
facility. She does not have a single textbook in her classroom. With the
top-of-the-line technology at her disposal and the low reading ability of many
of her students, there’s no need for standard paper texts. Instead she relies
on e-readers, iPads, desktop PCs, Polycom video conferencing equipment for
virtual field trips, live streaming for science demonstrations, and
text-to-speech read-aloud software to teach English and science. Within the
next ten years, public school classrooms across the country are going to look a
lot more like Mercy’s classroom because the educational possibilities with
these kinds of technologies are limitless. Have a question? Send an email to
mercypilkington@xxxxxxxxx

Regards

From Bridgerule in glories Devon, England.

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[access-uk] Author's guild: Here we go again

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