Typed on a dodgy keyboard into Arcturus
There are several reasons why the DRM practised by the British Library is completely unacceptable. Some are subjective, but some are objective. One of the latter is accessibility. This is a technical term (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility ) defined as:
Accessibility is a general term used to describe the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is accessible by as many people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the “ability to access” and possible benefit of some system or entity. Accessibility is often used to focus on people with disabilities and their right of access to entities, often through use of assistive techhnology.
In many cases, including the UK there is a legal requirement to address accessibility. Here, for example, is the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB)
hthtp://www.rnib.org.uk/professionals/webaccessibility/lawsandstandards/Pages/uk_law.aspx
I would assume, though the law is never simple and there may be exclusions, that the British Library was bound by these requirements. What I contend is that the imposition of DRM severely reduces accessibility, and the blog run by Bill McCoy of Adobe (“This is the corporate (yet opinionated) weblog of Bill McCoy – General Manager, ePublishing Business, Adobe Systems Incorporated.”) agrees. He is writing about Adobe Digital Editions, the technology used by the BL to enforce DRM. I quote his copyrighted blog in full (without permission, arguing public interest). The date is the end of last year http://blogs.adobe.com/billmccoyDRM /2009/10/adobe-ebooks–.html. All emphasis is mine
Adobe eBooks – Update on Accessibility Support
A few inquiries have come in about a press release earlier this week by the Reading Rights Coalition noting that the Los Angeles Public Library has suspended purchasing eBooks compatible with Adobe Digital Editions, because there is no accessibility support in our solution. This post is intended to clarify the situation and provide an update on our roadmap.
The basic concern of the Reading Rights Coalition is legitimate. Adobe Digital Editions is a PC application that replaced the eBook support that was present in older versions of Adobe Reader. While there are many new capabilities in Adobe Digital Editions, most importantly support for epub in addition to PDF, and overall its more consumer-focused user interface, Adobe Reader did support screen readers and a “read out loud” feature, neither of which is presently in Adobe Digital Editions. This is a regrettable situation. It stems from the fact that, for a number of reasons, we made the decision to build Adobe Digital Editions in a technology called Adobe Flex, targeting the Adobe Flash desktop runtime that became Adobe AIR. While the browser-based version of Flash Player has for quite some time included accessibility support, the desktop configuration has not, and neither the AIR team nor our Digital Editions team was able to incorporate accessibility support in our respective version 1 implementations.
We agree completely that eBook accessibility is critical. Adobe is helping to create the cross-platform standard for interoperable eBooks. Clearly, accessibility support is a fundamental requirement. One of the key motivations for supporting epub was that it was a more structure-based and thus more inherently accessible file format makes. So, the current situation is simply unacceptable.
So what are we doing about it?
First, the next major release of Adobe Digital Editions, expected within the coming year, is going to support accessiblity features. Earlier this week, Adobe previewed AIR 2, and we disclosed that screen reader support was going to be included. This will be a key enabler for us.
Additionally, Adobe has begun working with several vendors of accessibility-oriented software and devices to get them access to Adobe eBook rendering and DRM technology via our Adobe Reader Mobile SDK, so their solutions can consume Adobe eBooks. Our Reader Mobile SDK is not a revenue generator for Adobe; our standard terms are focused on proliferation (and with 17 announced licensees so far this year we are doing pretty well on that front). This is similar to the Open Screen Project for Flash licensing. But since many accessibility vendors are either nonproffits or have limited financial resources, we have gone even further in extending extraordinarily favorable terms to get them access to our portable document technology. I expect we will be able to make some specific announcements around this very shortly, but the bottom line is that there will soon be multiple means for visually-impaired end users to consume Adobe eBooks.
One still controversial issue is that some publishers are concerned lest non-visually-impaired consumers get access to “read out loud” functionality that would potentially undercut sales of audio books. Adobe plans in this regard are to support in our DRM system a permission setting that will enable publishers to disable “read out loud” functionality in software systems that are NOT focused on the visually impaired. But, we plan to default this permission setting to “enable” and recommend strongly that publishers not set it to “disable”. As well we plan to exempt accessibility-oriented software from being limited by this setting. We feel this approach will strike an appropriate balance between giving publishers the rights to determine how to distribute their copyrighted content, and ensuring that accessibility is provided.
Again, the current situation is unfortunate. As someone who has helped foster the adoption of epub, including the decision to support DAISY as a type of basic content within epub, it is a black eye for me personally that Adobe’s solution does not presently provide accessibility support. I am grateful that the Los Angeles Public Library has only “suspended” purchasing Adobe eBooks, and I look forward to working with our partners to, in short order, remedy the situation.
I shall be asking the BL about accessibility for ILL. I have already sent them an FOI about the non-accessibility of the PDF they sent to me.
The current position seems to be that the BL destroys or seriously downgrades the material it issues to readers because it wishes to, or has to, protect the commercial interests of the companies who supply it. (What am I writing?? The material supplied is written by US, the academics. But let’s fight the easiest battles first).
What distresses me is that as far as I can see nobody in the UK library system has highlighted this problem, let alone challenged it with the energy of Los Angeles. If any librarian wishes to correct me, you can do it anonymously on this blog or mail me. But until then I shall assume that virtually no concern, let alone opposition, was raised. I believe it is actually a duty of librarians to address this sort of thing and if they enlist academics they would find support. Some of us care about accessibility.
As you may have noticed from the corporate blog, I’ve left Adobe since making that post. I will note that, 7 months later, no such “next major release” of Adobe Digital Editions has as yet taken place.
So, arguably, the commitment I made at that time has not been violated.
But to me this points out another objective issue with reliance on a de facto standard DRM scheme proprietary to and controlled by a single corporation: lack of choice. With no alternative PC/Mac solution for reading Adobe-DRM-protected eBooks, we are all hostage to Adobe’s schedule releases of its software, and more to the point, Adobe’s overall corporate priorities and resulting resource allocation decisions.
Personally, I’ve become convinced that the browser is the right platform for digital document distribution, with open standards (HTML5) now enabling capabilities such as offline access and higher-quality typography. In a browser-centric model “heavyweight” DRM be replaced with user authentication mechanisms that we are already accustomed to using.
The browser market is increasingly competitive with 5 significant players having market share (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera), with 3 of these built on open source rendering engines (Webkit & Gecko). And Webkit is fast becoming the standard browser engine on mobile devices. To me this represents a very healthy foundation upon which to build a digital publishing ecosystem, a foundation that will ensure choice for publishers, distributors, and consumers: choice at the browser level, and choice of distribution solutions that build on the browser and open Web Standards.
I do empathize with content distributors, such as British Library, who have a tough row to hoe (as we say over here). By and large, distributors do not want DRM any more than end users do, and recognize that more times than not, DRM is counter-productive. I have found them in general to be quite concerned about accessibility. But distributors must honor commercial agreement with the underlying copyright holders, which puts them in a difficult position. I trust that the emergence of browser-based distribution solutions for digital publications, built on open standards, will give content distributors more options in the near future.