Knowledge Ecology International

I am often asked “who on earth would oppose a treaty to facilitate access to information and knowledge to people with reading disabilities?” Please read my selected quotes from the comments posted today on the Copyright office page here. But I would also like to highlight some really positive and supporting comments about the treaty. There are more of them than the negative ones but do they have the same weight?
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November 17, 2009

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The American Council of the Blind (ACB) and the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) submitted their comments in response to a Notice of Inquiry put forth by the United States Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). ACB is a leading U.S. consumer organization of blind or visually impaired individuals. Access to information is a critical area of interest for ACB, and expanding the availability of accessible format materials is viewed as highly beneficial to the blindness community in the United States and throughout the world. Continue Reading →

The Library Copyright Alliance (LCA) consists of the American Library Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries and the Association of Research Libraries.

Collectively, the ALA, ACRL and ARL represent over 139,000 libraries in the United States employing approximately 350,000 librarians and other personnel.

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Today Benetech, a leading Silicon Valley technology nonprofit and operator of the Bookshare online library for people with print disabilities submitted comments to the US Copyright Office and the USPTO on the topic of access to copyrighted works for people with print disabilities. Here are the major points, the submission is attached at the end of this blog.

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Today five groups filed the attached comments to the U.S. Copyright Office and the USPTO regarding the WIPO draft proposal to facilitate access to copyrighted works for persons, who are blind, have visual impairments and other reading disabilities in response to the Federal Register Notice of October 13, 2009.

The comments were signed by

• Dr. Manon Ress, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)

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On September 11, 2009, KEI submitted a FOIA request for the daily calendar of USTR head Ambassador Ron Kirk. On Friday afternoon, November 6, 2009, we received a response to that FOIA. This complements our earlier FOIA which covered his calendar from March 20 to May 1, 2009.

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November 9, 2009

Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman
Senator Jeff Sessions, Ranking Member
Senate Judiciary Committee

Senator Max Baucus, Chairman
Senator Chuck Grassley, Ranking Member
Senate Finance Committee

Representative John Conyers, Chairman
Representative Lamar Smith, Ranking Member
House Committee on the Judiciary

Representative Henry Waxman, Chairman,
Representative Joe Barton, Ranking Member
House Committee on Energy and Commerce

Representative Charles Rangel, Chairman
Representative Dave Camp, Ranking Member
House Committee on Ways and Means

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ACTA is a beefed up version of the WTO TRIPS enforcement sections, without the balance and safeguards of the agreement as whole.

1. The ACTA has ignored or left out the safeguards in TRIPS Articles 1, 6, 7, 8, 40 and 44.2.
2. The ACTA has refashioned in a more restrictive and anti-consumer way Articles 41, 44.1, 45, 46,47, 50, most of Section 4, and Article 61.

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This is a note about the leaked ACTA documents, that have been reported now by several news organizations and bloggers.*

On September 30, 2009, the EU wrote a three page memo on the Internet chapter of ACTA. This is about a week after the USTR held a secret meeting with selected corporate lobbyists and lawyers to debate the ACTA Internet under terms of a tough non-disclosure agreement.

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