LIS Links
First and Largest Academic Social Network of LIS Professionals in India
LIS Links Becoming More Social
Birthdays
Birthdays Today
Latest Activity
National Level Workshop on “Smart Publishing in the Digital Age: Strategies for Journal Publishing and Academic Profile Management” (Hybrid Mode) on 15th November 2025 at Hybrid Mode
November 15, 2025 from 8am to 5pm
Request to Participate in Research Study on AI Adoption in LIS at India
October 19, 2025 at 6pm to November 30, 2025 at 7pm
ICSSSM 2025: First International Conference on Smart Systems and Social Management at The Assam Royal Global University, Guwahati
November 6, 2025 to November 8, 2025
22nd MANLIBNET Convention and International Conference on Marching Beyond the Libraries: Talent, Technology, and Transformation (ICMBL) at KIIT Deemed to be University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha
December 18, 2025 at 9:30am to December 20, 2025 at 7:30pm
One Nation One Subscription for Research Excellence at Government Degree College, Mulugu,
November 7, 2025 all day
International Conference on Transforming Libraries for Viksit Bharat 2047: Advancing Digital Innovation Services in Higher Education, Public and Community Libraries at Swami Vivekananda Subharti Univversity Meerut
November 21, 2025 to November 22, 2025
Copyright and blind-friendly books: Between the lines
THE 198 books were piled on a table and wrapped in chains; only two remained free. Blind people were helping the 600 negotiators at a conference in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh visualise “book famine”. The world’s 285m visually impaired people (40m of them blind), live mostly in poor countries where books in friendly formats (Braille, audio and large print) are scarce. A recent estimate is that Africa has only 500 works for blind English-speakers.
The Marrakesh meeting was to finalise a copyright treaty, of which the most important provision—according to Dan Pescod of Britain’s Royal National Institute of Blind People—is to allow blind-friendly books to be exported. Today’s copyright regime prohibits such cross-border trade. A Braille book made in America, for example, cannot legally be sold in Britain. Argentina has over 50,000 works available for visually impaired readers, but they cannot be distributed in neighbouring Uruguay, which has a paltry 4,000. Charities must therefore acquire the rights and pay for another conversion (which can cost more than $7,000). This takes time and wastes money.
In late 2012 the World Intellectual Property Organisation, a UN body, suggested that the treaty could be signed the following June. But copyright laws have powerful defenders who are suspicious of any precedent that might dent their legal armour and business models. They worry that negotiators might cite exemptions for the blind when they hack away copyright laws to benefit other causes—looser drug patents, for example. The treaty will also help charities sidestep copyright laws in the 127 poor countries without legal provision for blind-friendly formats.
The Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), a trade group, warned the American negotiator, the US Patent Office, of the “dangerous precedent” an agreement might set. Though the treaty hardly affects Hollywood, it fears that unclear clauses could be abused, says Chris Marcich of the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA tried to remove the fair-use provision in the treaty, preferring other existing rules which stipulate that “special cases” should not affect “normal exploitation” of a work, or “unreasonably prejudice” the owner’s interest. BusinessEurope, a lobby, wrote to the European Commission to try to delay the signing. Hollywood also rustled up support from foreign friends: Nollywood (Nigeria) and Bollywood (India).
A round of negotiations in April brought “disaster”, says James Love, head of Knowledge Ecology International, a Washington-based charity, who helped draft the treaty. Although the talks had seemed almost finished, discussions reopened on 88 clauses. After a week of haggling in Morocco, careful wording ensured that the treaty was adopted on June 27th, three days after the books in chains were piled outside the venue. But for it to come into effect, 20 countries must pass it into domestic law.
Source - http://www.economist.com/news/international/21582039-blind-people-d...
Views: 203
© 2025 Created by Dr. Badan Barman.
Powered by
