[bksvol-discuss] Re: A Better Way to Read Ebooks
- From: Kelly Pierce <kkellyp@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2012 13:54:11 -0600
I just spoke with Christopher toth, the developer of the QRead
electronic book reading software. Currently, the software does not
enable a blind person to access protected EPUB books, such as Kindle
books from Amazon or iBooks from Apple. “Technically, the software
can display protected EPUB books as good as the other formats,” the
blind software genius told me. However, he is awaiting legal advice
before adding the functionality, as it might run afoul of copyright
laws. The software does support Bookshare books and unprotected EPUB
books, such as those provided by O’Reilly.
Currently, the United States Copyright Office in the Library of
congress is conducting a rulemaking on circumventions and exceptions
to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Final reply comments are due
today, March 2, 2012. In a joint petition, the American Foundation for
the Blind and the American Council of the Blind asked the Librarian of
Congress to exempt specifically:
“Literary works, distributed electronically, that: (1) contain digital
rights management and/or other access controls which either prevent
the enabling of the book's read-aloud functionality or which interfere
with screen readers or other applications or assistive technologies
that render the text in specialized formats; and (2) are legally
obtained by blind or other persons with print disabilities (as such
persons are defined in section 121 of Title 17, United States Code),
or are legally obtained by authorized entities (as defined in such
section) distributing such work exclusively to such persons. “
I have excerpted their argument below. It appears that the issue is
not technical but an artificial barrier created by some of the world’s
biggest corporations that prevents an extraordinarily talented
software developer from offering full access to the blind of millions
of electronic books.
The petition for copyright circumvention is below:
“The exemption we propose is of critical importance to the lives of
people who are
blind or visually impaired. Information in digital formats provides
the opportunity for
people who are blind or visually impaired to have access to and use of
information at the
same time and in the same manner as all users of that information. Regrettably,
technological measures to control access to copyrighted works have
been developed and
deployed in ways that prevent access to and fair use of e-books by
people who are blind
or visually impaired. The Librarian recognized this basic reality in
previous related rule
making proceedings initiated in 2002 and 2005.
However, the exemption previously established as a result of those proceedings
perpetuated a fundamental inequity, namely that users who circumvented
protection
controls to access a given book would nevertheless be liable for
copyright infringement if
another edition of the e-book could be accessed by the user. This
approach enshrined a
kind of “separate but equal” policy permitting publishers to
potentially charge users with
disabilities more than readers without disabilities to read the same
content or to force
users with disabilities to make do with potentially inferior editions
of a given book. This
is why we urge the Librarian to establish the exemption we propose herein.
Even though the Librarian declined to continue the previous exemption in 2010,
copy protection measures continue to be implemented in ways that bar
access by people
who are blind or visually impaired. Given the lack of appreciable
change in behavior by
the publishing industry to better ensure fair and consistent access to
copyrighted
electronic and other works, we urge the Librarian to establish the
exemption we propose
herein to guarantee that people who are blind or visually impaired are
not excluded from
the digital revolution. Congress clearly intended that fair use
provisions not be sacrificed
in efforts to secure digital content.
Publishers and the technology industry have simply designed anti-copy
technologies with apparently precious little effort to preserve fair
use by people with print
disabilities. Instead of working toward accessibility, many providers
seem inclined to
seek market dominance by closely linking published titles to
particular technologies from
particular vendors. This is not, we believe, an approach likely to
preserve fair use. The
truth is that well known current technologies can both protect works
from piracy and
allow for fair use, such as “Public Key Incryption (PKI)”
technologies. Unfortunately, the
digital publishing industry’s record in maintaining fair use access
for people who are
blind or visually impaired has not demonstrated a commitment to access.
It is inappropriate for publishers and technology companies to seek
shelter against
circumvention when the technology in widespread use undermines the
clear legislative
goal of the DMCA – and the entire copyright regime – to facilitate
fair use access by
people who are blind or visually impaired. We ask the Librarian,
therefore, to establish
the exemption we propose herein for all literary digital content until
such time as no
security measures or other access controls are deployed in the market
which prevent or
otherwise interfere with the use of the material by an individual with
print disabilities.
Until fair use access for people who are blind or visually impaired is
universally
recognized and implemented by the publishing industry, the exemption we propose
herein will remain relevant.
We note that in the most recent proceeding resulting in discontinuation of the
exemption in place at that time, the Copyright Office scolded
advocates for failing to
produce sufficient evidence of widespread discrimination on the part
of authors and
publishers. The apparent posture taken by the Copyright Office was
that shielding people
with disabilities from severe legal penalties for simply finding a way
to read an e-book
they legally obtained would only be in order if discrimination is
rampant. We want to be
on record that it is the experience of people who are blind or
visually impaired that the
shutting out of people with print disabilities from full and fair
access is indeed a rampant
problem, but this is not our burden of proof.
Granting an exemption is not conditioned by law on the ability of advocates to
demonstrate that some arbitrary percentage of the publishing industry
violates the fair use
rights of people with disabilities. Rather, the exemption we propose
herein must be
granted to ensure that even an isolated instance where an individual
user with print
disabilities cannot read the material without first circumventing
access controls does not
expose the user to severe penalties. In previous proceedings,
advocates presented the
Copyright Office with a handful of examples of e-books inaccessible to
people who are
blind or visually impaired. In the most recent proceeding, the
Copyright Office seemed to
suggest that advocates ought to have presented dozens or even hundreds of such
examples even though such an array of examples would represent decimal dust in
comparison to the total number of available e-book titles. While the
exemption we
propose herein is needed even if it only benefits a single user during
the three-year term
of the exemption, we know that the vast universe of inaccessible
titles will make the
exemption we propose of critical value to many.
Experience of Consumers
Despite an increase in the read aloud features of some e-book readers, DRM
continues to prevent people who are blind or visually impaired from
having full access to
e-books. For an e-book to be accessible to people with vision loss, it
must have full
screen reader functionality, or permit such functionality, and include
the option of
interoperating with a braille display. An accessible e-book would
allow a reader with
vision loss to control text-to-speech functionality such that the
reader can navigate a book
paragraph-by-paragraph, sentence-by-sentence, word-by-word, and learn
the spelling of
words.
Notably, in clarifying the Americans with Disabilities Act in relation
to the right
of students with vision loss to receive equal access to books, the
U.S. Department of
Education stated, “educational institutions cannot require the use of
electronic book
readers in a classroom setting if the readers are not fully accessible.”
1
Consequently, only
e-books that are “fully accessible” provide equal access to books for
readers who are
blind or visually impaired.
Of the current major e-book distributors (Barnes & Noble’s Nook store,
Amazon’s Kindle store, and Apple’s iBookstore)
2
Apple’s iBooks application is the only
mainstream e-book reader that is accessible to individuals who are
blind or visually
impaired. Apple’s full-featured screen reader includes word-by-word
navigation and
braille support.
3
By contrast, all of Barnes & Noble’s Nook reader programs are
completely inaccessible to blind users.
4
Although Amazon offers text-to-speech features
for its Kindle books, those features are so limited that the Kindle
has been described as an
inaccessible product with accessibility enhancements.
5
The Kindle for PC with
Accessibility Plug-in lacks the navigational feature to read
word-by-word or read the
spelling of words.
6
These are important features of e-reader technologies; indeed, a text-
to-speech feature that does not allow readers to learn the spelling of
words or use a braille
display will not meet the “fully accessible” standard defined by the
U.S. Department of
Education. Students and professionals need to be able to determine the
spelling of a word
in a technical book, or even the occasional unfamiliar word or name in
a novel. In
addition, an e-book that does not support output to a braille display
completely denies
access to more than a million deaf-blind readers.
7
An e-reader that includes text-to-
speech functionality but lacks character-by-character navigation and
braille output cannot
be considered fully accessible.
11,
U.S. Dept. of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Dear Colleague
Letter, May 26, 201at 1. 2ture
Rudiger Wischenbart, The Global Ebook Market: Current Conditions and
FuProjections, Publisher’s Weekly, October 10, 2011, at 4. 3sley
Majerus, Access to
Electronic Books, a Comparative Review, Braille itor, May 2011.
WeM
on4
Id. 5 Id. 6 Darren Burton, Kindle for PC with Accessibility Plugin,
AccessWorld, May 2011.
7r National Center for Deaf‐Blind Youth and Adults, tUsWHOWESERVE.htm.
Who We Serve, Helen Kellehww.hknc.org/Abou
ttp://w8
Wischenbart, supra, at 36. 9 Id at 5. 10 B&N Claims it Must DRM Public
Domain Books to Protect the Copyright on Them, T
echDirt (July 30, 2009, 10:38am),
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090730/0257115712.shtml. 11 The
Popular Classics section of the Kindle store presented
15,991 results. Kindle Store: Kindle Popular Classics,
http://www.amazon.com/s/?node=2245146011 (last visited on Nov. 25,
2011).
12stores are not likely to carry the exact same titles, so the actual
These three booknu
mber of inaccessible e-book titles is likely far greater than 1.8 million.
13
Majerus,
supra
.
14
Chan’s novel is not available at Bookshare.org or the National Library
Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Bookshare,
http://www.bookshare.org/
(last
visited Nov. 25, 2011); National Library Service for the Blind and
Physically Handicapped, http://www.loc.gov/nls/ (last visited Nov. 25,
2011).
The use of digital rights management or “DRM,” an access control technology
that prevents copying and use of e-books across platforms is
ubiquitous throughout the e-
book market.
8
Without the right to circumvent DRM and render e-books in accessible
formats, people who are blind and visually impaired cannot have full
access to an
enormous percentage of the millions of e-book titles available to
sighted consumers.
Published reports indicate that Barnes & Noble offers 2 million e-book titles,
Amazon offers 950,000 e-book titles, and Apple offers 200,000 e-book titles.
9
Nearly all
2 million Nook titles have DRM, including public domain titles.
10
Amazon has chosen
not to place DRM on its public domain titles in the Popular Classics Collection
11,
but that
still leaves the lion’s share of Amazon’s Kindle collection
inaccessible to blind readers. If
one assumes that the Kindle store carries all the titles in the
iBookstore, and the Nook
store carries all the titles in the Kindle store, then the Nook and
Kindle stores combined
may carry approximately 1.8 million inaccessible e-book titles after
subtracting the
200,000 accessible e-books in the iBookstore.
12
Regardless of the actual numbers, even if a small percentage of the Nook and
Kindle stores were protected by DRM, that would still leave tens if
not hundreds of
thousands of titles inaccessible to people who are blind or visually impaired.
Requiring blind Americans to limit their reading options to the most
accessible of
the current mainstream e-book readers by using Apple’s iBooks
application would both
restrict readers to Apple’s smaller e-book collection and require that
they use the iPad,
iPod Touch, or iPhone.
13
Where Amazon and Barnes & Noble both offer free e-book
applications that consumers can download onto their smartphones and computers,
customers of Apple’s iBookstore must purchase an Apple device (i.e.,
an iPad, iPhone, or
iPod Touch) to read their e-books. The cost of purchasing Apple
hardware merely to read
an accessible version of an e-book represents a substantial adverse
effect caused by the
DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. For example, although Darcie
Chan’s bestselling
novel
The Mill River Recluse
is available in an accessible version from the iBookstore
and inaccessible versions from the Kindle and Nook stores, requiring
blind readers to
purchase the sole accessible version of Chan’s book would financially
burden those who
do not own Apple devices.
14
The Fair Use Rationale for the Proposed Exemption
Historically, alternative methods of reading lawfully-acquired works
are, in fact,
the precise kind of non-infringing uses long permitted to allow access
by people who are
blind or visually impaired to the science and useful arts specified in
the U.S. Constitution.
To allow the legal lock-up of content would deprive people who are
blind or visually
impaired of a major constitutional goal of copyright: “to foster the
growth of learning and
culture for the public welfare.” H. Rep. No. 2222, 60th Cong., 2d Sess. (1909).
Indeed, Congress has historically recognized that the broad class of
copyrighted
works should, with respect to fair use, be accessible to and usable by
people who are
blind or visually impaired. The legislative history of the Copyright
Act of 1976 states
that:
Another special instance illustrating the application of the fair use doctrine
pertains to the making of copies or phonorecords of works in the special forms
needed for the use of blind persons. These special forms, such as
copies in Braille
and phonorecords of oral reading (talking books), are not usually made by the
publishers for commercial distribution. While making multiple copies or
phonorecords of work for general circulation requires the permission of the
copyright owner, a problem addressed in section 710 of the bill, the
making of a
single copy or phonorecord by an individual as a free service for a
blind person
would properly be considered a fair use under section 107.
H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. (1976).
Further, in the Supreme Court case of Sony Corporation of America. V.
Universal City
Studios, 464 U.S. 714 (1984) the Court stated that:
Making a copy of a copyrighted work for the convenience of a blind person is
expressly identified by the House Committee Report as an example of fair use,
with no suggestion that anything more than a purpose to entertain or to inform
need motivate the copying. Id. at 456 n.40.
The Copyright Act imposes other specific limitations on the exclusive rights of
copyright owners to ensure access for individuals who are blind or
visually impaired.
Section 110(8) excludes performances specifically designed for and
directed to people
who are blind or visually impaired using particular facilities;
Section 121 (the Chaffee
amendment) allows authorized entities to reproduce copyrighted
materials and convert
these materials to accessible formats for use by people who are blind
or visually impaired
as well as people with other print disabilities.
Access to the information contained in digitized literary works is ever more
critical to citizenship, education and overall participation in
society. The Librarian must
ensure that the DMCA’s “Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems”
provisions do
not undermine the nation’s historic commitment to fair use rights that
enable such
participation by people who are blind or visually impaired. Unless the
Librarian
establishes the exemption we propose herein, severe sanctions await
readers who are
blind or visually impaired, or anyone else, who devises means to
circumvent copy
protection measures to allow access by people with print disabilities.
The Librarian can
simply not allow this to occur.
For further information contact:
Eric Bridges Mark D. Richert, Esq.
Director of Advocacy and Governmental Affairs Director, Public Policy
American Council of the Blind American Foundation for the Blind
2200 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 650 1660 L Street, NW, Suite 513
Arlington, VA 22201 Washington, DC 20036
202-467-5081 202-469-6833
ebridges@xxxxxxx
mrichert@xxxxxxx
On 3/2/12, Monica Willyard <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Susan. You've asked a good question. I'll share what I know, and
> maybe someone else can fill in some things if I miss something.
>
> Kindle books have a proprietary format and have DRM protecting them.
> QRead can't open them because it is against American copyright law for
> the developer to break the DRM to open the file. We are allowed by law
> to do that individually for personal use if a book isn't accessible,
> but doing that is a difficult process.
>
> Books from Apple are different though. They are in Epub format. I
> think they have some protection on them. I'm not sure because iBooks
> is so accessible on the iPhone/iPad that I haven't tried opening them
> in anything else. QRead just came out today, and I haven't
> experimented with my books from Apple yet.
>
> Kindle books are accessible if you use the Kindle for PC with the
> accessibility plugin provided by Amazon. It's a clunky reader at best,
> especially for reading nonfiction and textbooks. Still, we can use it,
> and it does work. I'd love it if QRead could legally open Kindle
> books. For now, that is not possible due to how Amazon puts DRM on
> their books.
>
> --
> Monica Willyard
> Visit my GoodReads book shelf at http://www.goodreads.com/plumlipstick
>
> On 03/02/2012, Susan Lumpkin <slumpkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hi Monica,
>>
>> I'll probably give you your laugh for the day! Are Kindle or books from
>> the
>> Apple bookstore considered to be a proprietary format or are they E-pub
>> books? Hope you're not laughing too much!
>>
>> Susan (smiling)
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Monica Willyard
>> Sent: Friday, March 02, 2012 9:14 AM
>> To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: [bksvol-discuss] A Better Way to Read Ebooks
>>
>> Hi everyone. I've seen many questions from blind people on this list about
>> how they can read different formats of ebooks accessibly and how they can
>> get the most from Bookshare's own books. We've talked about how we're
>> tired
>> of running around trying to figure out how to read various types of
>> ebooks,
>> feeling like we want to pull our hair out. I found something new today,
>> and
>> I think it will help Bookshare's users and blind volunteers. Check out
>> http://q-continuum.net/qread/ for a better way to do things. For the first
>> time, we have a program that can read pdf, epub, Bookshare, text, and
>> other
>> types of books with one easy to use interface. The program is called
>> QRead,
>> and it's on sale for $20 till CSUN ends. There is a free demo version that
>> loads 30 percent of your book so you can see how it works.
>>
>> One of the features I like best is the ability to keep your place in books
>> when you shut down the program. I also like that it can unzip daisy books
>> from Bookshare on the fly, letting you start reading immediately without
>> thinking about where to unzip your book.
>>
>> I don't work for the developer or anything. I'm just really excited to
>> have
>> one interface, one reader for the PC instead of trying to sort out which
>> program will open a particular type of book. It's worth trying if you want
>> better options for handling ebooks.
>>
>> --
>> Monica Willyard
>> Visit my GoodReads book shelf at http://www.goodreads.com/plumlipstick
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>>
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