IP: more on make up your own mind -- more on Bookshare.org

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Jim Fruchterman <Jim () benetech org>
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 07:45:50 -0800
To: "'farber () cis upenn edu'" <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: RE: -- make up your own mind -- more on  Bookshare.org

This issue is one of the core issues of IP protection.  What is the
balancing act between IP owners and society?  The Association of American
Publishers actively supported this "hole" in copyright law by working
closely with the disabled groups, because we assume they thought the
tradeoff of bringing literacy to disabled people was worth a little less
control by IP owners.

We spent the last year working with AAP, reviewing our DRM plans and our
certification plans and getting their acknowledgement that what we are doing
is both legal and that we have worked extensively with the leading
publishers to run this service in a way that help disabled people and
protects the legitimate interests of authors and publishers.

But, as we know, on the Internet it's easy to make statements that are
plausible and yet untrue, because people don't take the effort to
investigate whether the claims are true.  So, a year of efforts with AAP
gets overshadowed on some lists by extensive and false claims about
Bookshare.org.  But, the good news about the Internet is that it's all there
on our website: you can read it all.  You can look up our nonprofit returns
on the web and see years of history as a leading nonprofit in the disability
field.  

So, let's tackle in short order Nancy's issues, which I'm sure are drawn
from things she has heard.

1.  We charge $50 a year to be a member.  Eventually, the goal is that this
will cover our costs of operating the service.  We feel it is unlikely that
we'll recover the $1+ million we'll spend of charitable funds to get the
service to break-even.  The fees are set this low because disabled people
are generally poor, and we offer an option to get the service for free in
exchange for volunteering to help improve the collection.

2.  The details of proof are right on our website:
http://www.bookshare.org/web/AboutDisabilities.html
Our main source of certification is the Library of Congress database of
disabled people.

3.  No safeguards.  We have a 7 point digital rights management plan that we
worked out with AAP that includes encryption, fingerprinting, watermarking
and a bunch of other protections to ensure that disabled people get the
benefits of this while discouraging abuse.

4.  Neither authors or publishers have been asked.  A year of work with the
AAP and authors has been very productive.  A number of authors and
publishers are offering their content to us free to help support the
disabled.  Even Baen Books, Nancy's organization, made an offer to us on
their Free Library.

Balancing social interests with IP owner interests is at the core of many IP
debates.  I hope this one should be reasonably uncontroversial, once anyone
takes the time to dig into our approach.

Jim Fruchterman
Benetech


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