Friday, May 29, 2009

The WIPO is getting sick

What kind of jackass would try and prevent blind people from getting books?

Turns out, the UN's World Intellectual Property Organization. See, copyright owners seem to think that blind people don't want electronic books to be available to them. So the whole Kindle "text to speech" system? Nope - some filthy dirty pirate might want to use that to (gasp!) get the book in audio format and spread it over the Internets! Oh, noes! Or what if someone develops a Braille based electronic reader, or a program that can translate normal text into Braille - well, they'd better get permission from the book's publisher first.

Of course, someone actually advocating that would have to be a pretty fracking horrible, awful person to suggest that. I mean, if you buy a book, you should be able to read it. So why would any publisher of a book want to restrict the ability to translate text to speech or Braille? What, they think a non-blind person will go "Man, this computer voice is so *awesome* compared to an actual human being - I'm never buying books on tape again!"

Next thing, they'll have to outlaw people reading the books out loud to their kids. Cause, you know, those stinking kids can just go buy the audio versions themselves for their bedtime stories. The little bastards.

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