Martin, your message is apt and to the point. And, your instinct for a FREE software digital talking book player is also on the mark. Now is a very, very good time for such a player to come into existence. As someone who continues to be very involved in the development of the NISO/DAISY dtb standard, I'd like to pose a challenge to the programmers among us: Please give us a dtb player or two which supports the new NISO/DAISY standards--mostly. I say"mostly" because it is not the end of the world if you can't immediately support MPEG. Please know that the NISO/DAISY standards people are keenly aware of the problems posed by specifying MPEG. Regretably, ogg-vorbis was not judged ready for prime time yet--so if someone wants to work on that, that would also be helpful, because we truly need a GPL compression package that provides quality files that will compete well with MPEG. Let me say why we need a GPL dtb player right now. I am seriously concerned that agencies will impose some kind of encryption technologies which they will not want to describe to GPL programmers. That would be most unfortunate. Far better, imho, for this community to show that a GPL player can really do the job of accessing (both text and audio) dtbs well. Far better to show that public/private key encryption may just be adequate enough. The pendulum has swung away from tight controls, at least among the libraries that serve our communities today. Frankly, the earlier version of the NISO standard was a bit stricter about copyright enforcement--what the publishers like to call "Digital Rights Management." I think even our earlier, stricter model was still smarter than what we've been seeing from commercial ebook publishers. The commercial publishers are putting the onus on the user and are killing industry prospects by doing so. The earlier recommendations are still online at: http://www.loc.gov/nls/niso/drm.htm In summary, this earlier document expects that some, but certainly not all, titles produced as digital talking books will need to be restricted to qualified recipients in order to maintain long standing programs of free access to books--as with NLS here in the U.S. This would also apply to U.S. agencies such as RFB&D. It would, in fact, be the copyright management scheme which would distinguish titles produced in the NISO standard as qualified titles under the so-called "Chafee Amendement" to U.S. Copyright law. Chafee is a good thing, and we should not lose it. The DMCA is another matter entirely. The NISO thinking was to put the emphasis on catching willful violaters, not on needlessly encumbering honest users. My expectation is that public/private key can do this very well--and can do it in a platform independ matter. Of course there's a chicken and egg aspect to all of this. Who would build a player when there's nothing to play? How would one even test it? Yet, I would think that this community would not want to leave the definitions of what's possible to agencies who are far more steeped in proprietary software than is probably good for the community at large. So, let me simply offer this: I will find some NISO/DAISY content for you to test a player with if you are building a GPL player and need something to work with. Just write me privately. Lastly, let me say just a little more about how much content is actually out there. There is virtually none in the newest version of the standard simply because it's still not 100% nailed down. The NISO folks have until December 17 to vote on the specifications that were submitted to them just a few weeks ago. You should know that we truly do not expect any problems with this voting, and we do expect a lovely Christmas pressent shortly after December 17. There is a fair amount of content available to earlier incarnations of the digital talking book specifications as produced by DAISY. In particular, it may be important for players to support the new NISO/DAISY specifications at: http://www.loc.gov/nls/niso as well as the older, DAISY 2.0 specifications which can be found at: http://www.daisy.org In particular, RFB&D has been quietly testing textbooks in several K-12 schools for blind children around the U.S. They are hoping to begin offering about 3,000 titles encoded in DAISY 2.0 to all their clients sometime during 2002. Also, the talking book programs at CNIB and RNIB (U.K.) are expecting to launch programs for their clients in the spring of 2002 with approximately2,500 titles in each. So, as you can see, content does already exist in the older DAISY 2.0 specification, though it is not yet generally available. Last point on the encryption issues. We expect that whatever copyright based encryption/decryption is involved needs to be nationally based. In other words, the laws that authorize free programs for blind (and otherwise print disabled) people differ country to country. So, any support for a particular solution needs to be modular in order to handle such national differences. I want to end on a more cheerful point. Even mainstream publishers are beginning to realize that encumbering users is a bad way to promote the value of electronic publishing. Please take a look at this website: http://www.openanebook.org It is intended to be a place for publishers of all kinds to offer their free content and their free tools. So, if you know of any, please offer them up there. And, if you have influence with any blindness agency or ebook publishers, please get them to join DAISY and/or OEBF. We need broader participation in both places in order to realize a vision of epublishing which creates accessible titles that are comfortable and fun to use while still paying authors and editors for the value they add. On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, Martin G. McCormick wrote: > I certainly hope that players for DTB's will be available > for Linux when the technology actually begins to bear fruit. > > This truly is a wonderful next step in the Talking Book > program. Just think of the logistical problems of moving and > caring for physical materials that this solves. There will still > need to be traditional Talking Books for many years to come, but > I think this is the future and it may get to a point where there > won't need to be as many physical recordings produced as there > are now. > > The one thing I see as holding things up is the one > artificial technical issue and that is DRM or Digital Rights > Management. > > How is that going to be accomplished? The standards > document simply says that digital rights management will be > supported but probably wisely does not prescribe exactly what > sort of mechanism will be used. > > Hopefully, being eligible to receive traditional Talking > Books and Braille materials will enable one to also receive any > DTB's they are entitled to receive. > > In the main-stream consumer world, digital rights > management has not been doing too well. Some systems are hacked > almost before they are released. Other systems tend to do the > opposite and malfunction in ways their developers never thought > of to cause honest users of the technology to be denied service. > > Some rights management systems have even gained the > distinction of suffering from both maladies. The crackers > de fang the protection and the honest users discover that the > software thinks they are thieves because of something their > equipment or they accidentally did. > > This issue, not technology, has held up everything from > digital audio tape a decade or so ago to present-day high-definition > television systems. > > Linux and FreeBSD should actually be good test beds for > this technology because it is based on open-source models and any > hanky panky mechanisms such as back doors or scripting > applications are a little easier to police than they are in > proprietary operating systems. > > Martin McCormick WB5AGZ Stillwater, OK > OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Blinux-list@redhat.com > https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina@afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175 Chair, Accessibility SIG Open Electronic Book Forum (OEBF) http://www.openebook.org Will electronic books surpass print books? Read our white paper, Surpassing Gutenberg, at http://www.afb.org/ebook.asp Download a free sample Digital Talking Book edition of Martin Luther King Jr's inspiring "I Have A Dream" speech at http://www.afb.org/mlkweb.asp Learn how to make accessible software at http://www.afb.org/accessapp.asp