Re: Acrobat PDF & Accessibility

In hard copy books i read, It says rredistribution in any form is
prohibitted without the written concent of the publisher yada yada yada.
We do not own the book.  If we buy a house we may not even own the house
because we cannot put a different colored door on it.  However, if we
buy a piece of land in the wilderness and build a home on it and
everything in that home is built by our hands, we might just bearly own
the home.  This is of course, unless the bank holds a note on it.
Ebooks are not ours to do with as we please according to what I
understand of the rules that publishers employ to protect them.  There
are some exemptions in this country for educational purposes but those
rules do not factor in the use of software to get around the conditions
of software.  One of the biggest reasons we have a problem with pdf is
that very fact.  were it not for that fact, adobe would just provide
everything in such a way as to allow us access without having to go
through msaa and locking in all sorts of safety mechanisms to be sure
that the document is not altered or re-duplicated in some other form.
This is half the problem we have with documents rendered with 5.0.5 even
more so than with 4.05 and the access plug in.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Vadim Plessky" <lucy-ples@mtu-net.ru>
To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@home.com>
Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2001 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: Acrobat PDF & Accessibility


On Monday 24 December 2001 16:35, David Poehlman wrote:
|   we don't own them.  we own the right to use them.  if that means
|   altering them in some way, we technically violate the copy right.
|

Hello David!

By "them", do you mean "e-Books" or ... everything?
I have checked several normal, printed books I have on a bookshelf.
There is nothing written on those books about "right to use them" or
wether I
own this book or not.
I guess as soon as I passed checkpoint (cash register) in bookstore with
that
book (and paid for it) - I own that book. But of course I can't claim
ownership for content, as its author is clearly indicated.

Than I checked AudioCD.
For example, I have "A song for you" CD.
(p) and (c) Excelsior. ... Manufactured in the USA by Excelsior.
WARNING: All rights reserved. Unauthored duplication is a violation of
applicable laws.

As you see, "duplication" is prohibited, but nothing is said about
converting
to other (different) formats, either to audio tape on cassette deck or
to mp3
on hard drive.

Now I want to return back to traditional books, as it's on-topic with
subject.
I think I have mentioned somewehere that Xerox manufacturers
DocumentCenter
(DC330, DC340) machines, which can *save to PDF* any document (with
auto-feeding scanner) or book placed on the glass (you need to turn
pages
manually inthis case).
I believe it's pretty legal when you bought book to have an electronic
copy
of it (either in PDF format, or converted further to HTML+CSS, or XHTML,
or
XML)
Your house can disappear in fire (or in earthquake), together with
books,
bookshelfs, etc. But if you have electronic copy  (placed supposely on
your
web server) - you still have it.
And this, BTW, one of the key moving factors for the Internet
Revolution.

So I think possibility to make copy of book I won is my fundamental
right,
and transforming its content via some technical method (either screen
reader
or scan-to-PDF/convert-to-HTML method) is absolutely legal (and
necessary, to
prevent protection of my stuff in cases of fire, earthquake, etc.)

|   ----- Original Message -----
|   From: "Vadim Plessky" <lucy-ples@mtu-net.ru>
|   To: "David Poehlman" <poehlman1@home.com>
|   Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
|   Sent: Monday, December 24, 2001 1:33 PM
|   Subject: Re: Acrobat PDF & Accessibility
|
|
|   And Dmitry Sklyarov's case definitly comes here in mind.
|   What about e-Books?
|   Are the rights to read them *in a way you prefer* (like Screen
Reder, or
|   with
|   increased/changed fonts) granted to us by the Constitution, or given
by
|   Content Publisher?
|
|   to rephrase my question:
|   Do you break any law by applying "publicly available free conversion
|   tools"
|   on some content which is *owned* by you?
|   (either you loaded it from the intrnet, or bought in shop/online, or
|   leased,
|   or rights to use this content was given to you by friend, etc.)
|

--

Vadim Plessky
http://kde2.newmail.ru  (English)
33 Window Decorations and 6 Widget Styles for KDE
http://kde2.newmail.ru/kde_themes.html
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http://kde2.newmail.ru/themes/

Received on Monday, 24 December 2001 15:24:33 UTC