DRM and Accessibility - Compensation model

How to provide in compensation model

Or

DRM and Accessibility

 11:00 am  May 18, 2004

Janina Sajka (American Foundation for the Blind)

Richard Shatzberg (Aequus Technologies)

Pearce McNulty (Houghton Mifflin)

• Why DRM methods limit content accessibility
• Seems mutually exclusive
• Current state of technologies – choose only one state: secure or accessible.
• ADOBE PDF
• Static look of printed page doesn’t solve accessibility problems
• But has built-in text to speech and copy protection features
• Most disability advocates don’t like PDF because it is static
• XML file with proprietary reader
• Content and reader tied on physical piece of media
• No installed based
• More costly than PDF to produce
• Web delivery with standard browser and screen reader
• Subscription based model
• Hesitation to include core content
• 508 compliance makes content inherently copyable
• [seems the bottom line is no copying allowed]
• You defeat DRM if they become accessible
• Solutions
• Chafee model vs compensation model
• A NON-Chafee model
• Doing by regulations does no one any good
• But, publishers provide accessible materials directly to students
• Requires electronic rights to reproduce in alternate formats
• Issue of compensation need to support broader market
• Lacking in available market

Janina Sajka

AFB

If we get this right, we’ll get to a different kind of publishing than we have known before.  The days of the scriptorium are long over.  The printing press in the last millennium made mass communications, mass reading, mass learning available.

Now the digital environment makes mass copying very possible.

Here are some good principles to tell if we are on the right path…

Files are always going to be copyable.  There has yet to be a file format that hasn’t been broken into.  To make technology what it isn’t is a mistake – round one of preserving the publishing business as it was.

We are in the very early stages of what electronic publishing is and will probably look a lot different than simply electronic copy of a print book.

When we do get the technology right – it changes lives.  If you are disable looking at spending rest of your life – then you look at the technology, looking at a book with a bunch of 0’s and 1’s organized creative then you feel that should be made available.

What we discovered in last 20 years – making the tech do things most of the world was not doing with it – it makes it possible for people to read, write, print, send an email.

Illustrates why first round of DRM we butted heads and didn’t get it right.

You don’t need to lose your shirt publishing and we don’t need to lose access.

But, we need to change how we approach.  This is an appeal not to technology but to common sense as to how we employ technology.

Before we worry about locking product up – let’s make it worth locking up – worth having.

Make it worth honest people paying for it.

Accessibility is not about technology its about what the human being using the technology is able to do. 

A voice works for blind – not for the non-blind

Scrolling works if vertical scrolling – forget that horizontal stuff.

In short, let me tell the tech how I need the information presented – you worry about the content.

WWW and 508 is a good example of how this works.

[note to self: Fair use has not been mentioned once thus far]

With access to XML, labels to content, then we can do what we need.  No one would scan (they scan now because they are desperate)..

What is the future like?

Some principles to think about

1. Knowing what business you are in
1. Publishing was a lot about mfg and distribution of a book
2. That changes with e-publishing
3. If you are taking on security by obscurity

                                                              i.      Look at open source method

                                                            ii.      Takes you out of accessibility/security business – you are publishers not security people

2. Look at DRM solution that is modular
1. Specifications and standards that people can get at

                                                              i.      You aren’t gonna pay $70,000 for access to the API

3. Worry about the attractiveness of the product rather than the encryption
1. Most people are more focused on the content
2. Those that hack in the labs, let them

                                                              i.      That’s how tomorrow’s technology starts

4. Maybe leakage (a little bit) is acceptable.
1. O’Reilly publishes a lot of on line content.
2. They aren’t locking it up and they are still in the business
5. If you go to fairly strong encryption it won’t succeed of print, music, broadcast, banking etc all use different standards
6. Interoperability: Working to open specifications is important
1. Interoperability of content and device is important
2. Tying to physical device didn’t work in round one
3. No one vendor is gonna deliver best product for disabled as their needs
4. Long history of access, more than just chafee (Wagner act – sound recordings, etc)
5. Points out de-reg of telephone market and how consumer choice works – and the interoperability and open standards allowed this to happen.
6. No one tech provider will be sole source if you are going to succeed
7. People with disabilities are the early adopters – because we don’t have other options.

We can make the e-environment as accessible as the built environment. Those ramps in the curbs and  buildings weren’t built for baby carriages but they sure are useful today for that purpose.

[Adobe a no-show today]

Nina – in order to add the things to Adobe to support access – you have to add things to it.  Adobe was invented to print reliably to a printer.  Everything else is figuring after the fact how to do it right.   PDF is hard to re-purpose.

Richard

We develop technologies to provide access to those with disabilities first - -the way we do that offers feature functionality that aid all others (ESL, senior citizens).  We believe this is good for all kids

[wonder if anyone thinks in terms of knowledge cost vs manufacturing cost?]

I believe free is bad – it leads to mediocre outcomes.

Best outcome is if you the publishers convert content into accessible format – lock into player and you distribute through your business models.

Dr. Robert Smith

Challenges between DRM and e-books

Actually it is an opportunity –

1. Right now, paper doesn’t allow you to know if it is being copied
2. Tech would allow authentication and tracking if a copy has been made and installed on 30 different computers.
3. Whether you use the web to authenticate and supplement material or just use the web to authenticate and by binding with a player – with an open standard if you want.
4. We have opportunity to have content safer than paper content.

Richard

CAST e-reader

Demonstrates product

Seeing and hearing content simultaneously improves data retention.

[Do publishers think anything done to, or to compliment, their content is a ‘derivative work?’ What are examples of unlicensed derivative works?]

By tying CD content to web content – you can control the concept of time and space (move the location and that would invalidate the CD).

[Wonder what publishers are examining for DRM tools?]

CAST also has sign language interpretation (neat!) [imagine using this tool for online news]  The same visual character can be used as an online mentor.  Same character being used to train troops in middle east for interaction with locals.

Is this patented? Yes  So no one else can create anything like this but you? You have a problem with that? [heh heh] There are a variety of people developing players.  You pick the players and lock it.

Nina: There are also non-proprietary ways to synchronize the different presentations of content.  A lot of this uses SMIL (W3C protocol) to ty this together… 

Robert Smith: This content was daisy content…  the underlying content can be rendered by another player.

Liz: How would Pearson use something like that.  Say we got 7,000 copies of a mathbook going to a college.  How does CAST come into that and what does it cost?  Do we sell that with every one of those books?

Richard:  We convert your content, lock it with player, hand master copy back to you.  Pricing is  volume based.  Working on per book fee, eliminating hurdle of entry – per book fee is considerable less than $100 (did not come here to sell)…

Nina: You have a different model in e-text – not limited to copies, could put bits and pieces of the text on servers… [hmm… dis-aggregation of text books]