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Here was a public domain children’s book that you were not allowed
to copy, not allowed to lend, not allowed to give, and, as the “permissions”
indicated, not allowed to “read aloud”!
The public relations nightmare attached to that final permission.
For the text did not say that you were not permitted to use the Read
Aloud button; it said you did not have the permission to read the book
aloud. That led some people to think that Adobe was restricting the
right of parents, for example, to read the book to their children, which
seemed, to say the least, absurd.
Adobe responded quickly that it was absurd to think that it was trying
to restrict the right to read a book aloud. Obviously it was only restricting
the ability to use the Read Aloud button to have the book read
aloud. But the question Adobe never did answer is this: Would Adobe
thus agree that a consumer was free to use software to hack around the
restrictions built into the eBook Reader? If some company (call it
Elcomsoft) developed a program to disable the technological protection
built into an Adobe eBook so that a blind person, say, could use a
computer to read the book aloud, would Adobe agree that such a use of
an eBook Reader was fair? Adobe didn’t answer because the answer,
however absurd it might seem, is no.
The point is not to blame Adobe. Indeed, Adobe is among the most
innovative companies developing strategies to balance open access to
content with incentives for companies to innovate. But Adobe’s technology
enables control, and Adobe has an incentive to defend this control.
That incentive is understandable, yet what it creates is often crazy.
To see the point in a particularly absurd context, consider a favorite
story of mine that makes the same point.
Consider the robotic dog made by Sony named “Aibo.” The Aibo
learns tricks, cuddles, and follows you around. It eats only electricity
and that doesn’t leave that much of a mess (at least in your house).
The Aibo is expensive and popular. Fans from around the world
have set up clubs to trade stories. One fan in particular set up a Web
site to enable information about the Aibo dog to be shared.This fan set
“PROPERTY” 153