The Library of Congress has published its latest digital strategy, laying out a bold plan to “exponentially grow” its collections through digital acquisitions; “maximize the use of content” by providing machine-readable rights data and using interoperable formats and better search; to support data-driven research with giant bulk-downloadable corpuses of materials and metadata; to improve its website; to syndicate Library assets to other websites; to crowdsource the acquisition of new materials; to experiment with new tools and techniques; and to preserve digital assets with the same assiduousness that the Library has shown with its physical collection for centuries.
Continue reading “Behold! The Library of Congress’s audacious plan to digitize and share the nation’s treasures”
Tag: access
Obama administration plays politics with treaty on copyright exceptions for disabled people
An update on the story about the Obama administration stonewalling on a treaty to make it easier for disabled people to access copyrighted works: “Obama can’t overcome opposition from a handful of mostly foreign owned publishers to support a treaty for blind people. This is a money in politics story. If blind people were financing his campaign, they would have had a treaty a year ago. The Obama administration wants the decision on the treaty delayed until the election so it will not interfere with its campaign fundraising from publishers, and so it will not suffer bad publicity for opposing the treaty, before the election.”
(Thanks, Jamie!)
US stonewalling treaty that would help disabled people access copyrighted works
The World Intellectual Property Organization has been working on a treaty to protect the rights of disabled people with regard to copyright since 1985. Most of the world’s rich countries and developing nations support this work. However, two key entities are stonewalling and holding up the treaty: the European Commission (despite strong support from the European Parliament); and the USA, whose trade negotiators are listening to big business lobby groups like the Association of American Publishers, who oppose any treaty that creates rights for information users instead of corporations.
The idea of the treaty is to harmonize the rights of disabled people in different countries. For example, in the USA, it’s legal to make assistive editions of books — audiobooks, ebooks, Braille and large type books — without permission from the copyright holder. The same right exists in Canada. But Canadian groups like the Canadian National Institute for the Blind can’t just import those assistive editions and offer them to their members — they have to incur the substantial expense all over again. Some countries include people who have other disabilities (such as the inability to turn pages due to paralysis or arm injuries or other disabilities) in their disabled access laws. Some don’t. Some don’t have any such laws at all. It’s a mess, and the cash-strapped, volunteer-run organizations that serve some of the most vulnerable people on Earth are unable to cooperate across borders to assist one another.
The USA’s stonewalling has put the treaty into a kind of limbo. Most of us, if we live long enough, will be visually disabled to some extent. That means that most of us would someday benefit from a treaty that provides access to disabled people. And that means that we are all being held hostage by the US Trade Representative’s sucking up to a few special interest lobbies.
What’s up with the White House? To understand the position of the United States, listen to last week’s interview with Alan Adler of the Association of American Publishers (here). What Adler is saying is that his membership opposes a treaty, not because of what the treaty would do in the context of persons with disabilities, but because it would set a precedent that a copyright treaty could focus on the rights of users rather than copyright owners, and that precedent can spread to other areas, where publishers have a real economic interest, such as the education and library markets. This is basically the Obama position for the past three years — to push disabilities groups to accept some lesser non-binding recommendation, rather than a treaty.
Right now the United States delegate will only say that the issue is being reviewed within the government. The three major decision makers on this issue are Maria Pallante of the United States Copyright Office, Ambassador Ron Kirk who serves as head of USTR in the White House, and David Kappos at USPTO. Most people believe USTR has been a problem, and we are told that Pallante (who earlier supported PIPA/SOPA) has yet to support a treaty. David Kappos is the lead agency on this, and if he wanted a treaty, we would have an agreement at WIPO by Wednesday to recommend a diplomatic conference for to take place 2013.
In the United States Congress, there have been no hearings and little interest in the issue. Senator Harkin, who Chairs the Senate HELP Committee and has jurisdiction over disabilities issue wrote a strong letter in support of the treaty approach: http://keionline.org/node/1397. Senator Leahy chairs the Judiciary committee, which has jurisdiction over copyright law. Like Pallante, he supported PIPA/SOPA. When we meet with Senator Leahy’s office, we were told he was opposed to a treaty — because it would require the United States to amend its law, to permit the export of accessible copies of copyright works to blind people in other countries — something now illegal under US law.
US position at WIPO on “the Nature of the Instrument” for copyright exceptions for disabilities
(Thanks, Jamie!)
Publishing America’s for-pay, private laws – legal piracy
Rogue archivist Carl Malamud sez,
On March 15,
Boing Boing kindly allowed me to use this
august forum to serve notice on 7 government officials and 10 of the CEOs of the $1-billion/year industry of
standards people. The issue was privately-developed public safety standards that were incorporated into U.S. law, but
only available by paying big bucks. We asked the government and the standards people to send us their comments by
May 1 as to why the law shouldn’t be available for all to read.There have been no such comments received, so today
we’re making available for public inspection 317 legally-mandated
documents, most of why have been previously unavailable on the net. To properly document
this open source release, Tim O’Reilly, Jennifer Pahlka, and the 2012 Code for America fellows joined me in an Internet
town hall.Although Public.Resource.Org received no comments from the standards people, this doesn’t mean they haven’t
circled the wagons. Tuesday [today], the Department of Commerce
is hosting the CEOs of the biggest standards
bodies in a big standards summit. We asked to participate as did a number of other public interest groups, but we didn’t make
the cut.Although all these Standards Development Organizations are non-profits, they do quite well for themselves.
In fact, the 5 nonprofit CEOs attending this meeting (which is conveniently not webcast and isn’t taking questions or comments
from the net), the average salary is $633,061. The standards people claim they need the money, but I don’t think they need
nearly as much as they’re making and, in any case, you can’t have a democracy if the citizens don’t know what the law is.
I hope everybody can take a few minutes to look at these standards and make your voice known here on Boing Boing or directly
to your government. (This isn’t just a U.S. issue, by the way, and we’re now preparing a release of public safety standards
for other countries.)If you’re interested in other links, you might consider:
* One Man’s Quest to Make Information Free (Bloomberg Business)
* Making Laws More Public (On the Media)