Problems with pdf files.

[Amanda Lee]

Janina,

Appears that Geof muddied the waters somewhat as he took my statements out
of context and inserted his own.  This is why I don't like this form of
responding to email because it is very easy to distort what the original
sender intended to say.

I was basically playing devil's advocate because it goes withoug saying that
a Copyright is just that and basically unless one modifies the content and
mis-represents it's intent, there is little that can be done to dictate to
the end user what he or she does with the information provided.  If no
ill-intent is demonstrated, it's really in the gray area of what defines the
boundaries of enforceable law.  This is why I feel certain that if someone
developed a program which enabled .pdf to be accessed via a Screen Reader or
other technologies intended for use by an individual who is blind, vision
impaired or print disabled, that Adobe would have a lot of work to do to
over-rule access to information which is already provided for under the law
versus the burden of proof necessary to justify that as persons who need to
utilize sed information, that we have any other intent.

Amanda Lee


----- Original Message -----
From: "Janina Sajka" <janina at afb.net>
To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2002 10:21 AM
Subject: Re: Problems with pdf files.


> Let's be clear about this. Whatever you read in any copyright statement is
> valid only if it falls within the law goveerning copyright. Congress and
> the courts decide what the law is in the U.S., not copyright holders.
> Silly statements such as the one below about reading aloud are exactly the
> kind of industry over-reaching that's going to get the DMCA reopened in
> Congress one of these days.
>  On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Geoff Shang wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Amanda Lee wrote:
> >
> > > So if I have a colleague print the document and I then scan it with an
OCR
> > > program, is that illegal?  Yet I technically would have displayed the
> > > document in another form.  So I also suppose it is illegal to magnify
the
> > > font on the screen so that a low vision person can read it?  Godf
forbid!
> >
> > A friend of mine said that he's seen a copyright licence for a
particular
> > PDF document that said that the person did not have the right to read
the
> > document aloud.
> >
> > Fair use will get killed off if we let it.
> >
> > Geoff.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> >
>
> --
>
> Janina Sajka, Director
> Technology Research and Development
> Governmental Relations Group
> American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
>
> Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175
>
> Chair, Accessibility SIG
> Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF)
> http://www.openebook.org
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>