The reason in my mind is that you are signing up for a service provided by the US government. This service is free of charge, and you are agreeing to it's terms when you sign up for it. The law enabling this service aims to provide material free to the blind while protecting the rights of the publishers. This program is intended for all blind citizens of the US and not just those with PC's. This is not a business or profit making venture, but is paid for by tax dollars, of which I'm a tax payer. Your analogies to Sony and Apple just don't apply. Even though we have the luxury of keeping the books around and playing them on multiple players, it doesn't change the fact that this is a library, and we're borrowing these books.
BTW, there is no way to listen to these books on a PC. You need a player provided for free by the NLS or you can purchase several different book players. -- Christopher chalt...@gmail.com -----Original Message----- From: pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org [mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On Behalf Of James Homuth Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 6:48 PM To: 'PC Audio Discussion List' Subject: RE: It's Still Stealing Kevin, the point is this. Why should you, after obtaining the NLS books, have to go and get one of the NLS approved players just to enjoy the privelege of being able to listen to the book while not at the computer? That would be like Soni putting out an album with copy protection that limitted what you could play it on to CD players manufactured by Soni. Soni already tried the whole copy protection to prevent people from putting the contents of CD's on their computers, or copying them to other CD's. A pretty high-profile lawsuit later, they don't do that anymore. Apple tried to say you could only put music you purchased from iTunes on your iPod. You couldn't burn that to CD, or play it in anything else that wasn't either your iPod or iTunes. Specificly, the version of iTunes on the computer to which it was downloaded. Without getting into the nitty gritty details, let's just say they don't do that anymore either. The same applies to NLS. The only reason it hasn't changed yet is because there's no reason for them to, according to them. Hence, people will continue to break the copy protection anyway. -----Original Message----- From: pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org [mailto:pc-audio-boun...@pc-audio.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Minor Sent: April 18, 2010 6:02 PM To: 'PC Audio Discussion List' Subject: RE: It's Still Stealing Hi John and list. I'm going to comment on several messages that I've seen on this topic. First, John, I wonder if your direct boss is the owner of the station. If he is, the station may get into trouble if publishers find out he is allowing material sent to the station is being copied. This material is specificly for the use of the station. In fact, I'm not sure if the owner of the CD actually owns the music. With software, you are licensed to use the software. You don't own the copy you use, you just have a license for it. I'm not blaming you for copying the CD's. Just be aware that the station could be in legal trouble if investigated. As for using VCR's or tape recorders, this has been a debate that the publishers of material have had with people for years. I don't know the legal wording, but I believe that courts have ruled that so long as you use the material you obtain from over the air, you have the right to use it for your own private use. This also holds for albums you buy. If you decide to make a compilation CD for a friend, technicly you're breaking the law. I'm guilty of doing this myself. I'm not getting anything for what I do either, but that doesn't make what I do legal. As for recording material over a computer, there has been a product cease production precisely because of this, and it made many blind people mad. XM had a great device called a PCR. You'd hook the antenna to it, run a cable from it to either the line in jack of your sound card or stereo, and hook it up to your computer with a USB cable. The software that came with it displayed the channel you were on, as well as the title and artist of the song being played. Unfortunately, someone figured out how to convert the audio into labeled mp3 files. I say unfortunately, because the RIAA learned about this and threated to sue XM. The product no longer was made. I did get lucky and purchased one of these. It's not the most accessible piece of equipment with a screen reader, but you can view the title of the song that is being played, as well as easily switch channels by entering their number. Now for my comments on BARD, which I'll call NLS. First, it's not true that you have to buy a player to listen to NLS books. Your local library can provide you with a free player to play this content. It not only plays NLS content, but mp3 files, as well as some other standard audio file formats. It's true that you can't play things like books from Audible, but you can't beat the price of either the player or the books you can download. It's true that the books are in a protected form, but I personally don't have a problem with this. Finally, we could have limitless arguments on what publishers should get for their work, how they protect it, and ways to circumvent these protection schemes. In short, if someone copy protects something, someone will find a way to crack it. As for NLS, I think it's sad that it's limited to U.S. citizens, but I understand why. Have a good day, and don't work too hard. Kevin Minor kmi...@windstream.net To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: pc-audio-unsubscr...@pc-audio.org
