Advocates for the blind say DMCA exemptions to break ebook DRM for accessibility should be permanent, rather than having to be renewed every three years
regardless of what type of device it is. Read the Copyright Office's new 1201 ruling here: https://www.copyright.gov/... @internetarchive : TODAY: @librarycongress alters the #DMCA again permitting the blind to access e-texts. Advocates ask: Shouldn't this be the law not an exemption? “As the mainstream has embraced ebooks, accessibility has gotten lost,” says @Riccobono, Pres. of @NFB_voice. https://www.wired.com/... Cory Doctorow / @doctorow : And they deserve our sympathy, because the Copyright Office managed to kick them in the teeth even as it grudgingly granted this exemption. As @dlberes writes for @wired, the Copyright Office denied a petition to make the exemption permanent. https://www.wired.com/... 37/ Prof. Meta-Spice / @blakereid : Fantastic writeup on this exemption and the unfortunate need to renew it every three years from @dlberes @wired https://www.wired.com/... https://twitter.com/... @wired : 32 years after the invention of the World Wide Web, people with print disabilities—the inability to read printed text due to blindness or other impairments—are still waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. https://www.wired.com/... @library_futures : Promoting accessibility in digital content is one of the reasons we were formed! Important article in @WIRED 👇🏾 “As the mainstream has embraced ebooks, accessibility has gotten lost...It's an afterthought.” https://www.wired.com/... Michelle Manafy / @michellemanafy : Advocates for the blind are fighting an endless battle to access ebooks that sighted people take for granted, working against copyright law that gives significant protections to corporate powers and publishers who don't cater to their needs. https://www.wired.com/... Thanks: @dlberes See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The Copyright Office has once again granted blind readers an exemption to break ebook DRM — but refused their petition to make it permanent, continuing the triennial renewal cycle that dates back through earlier rulemakings like the 2015 exemptions for jailbreaking, DVD remixing, and car-software research. National Federation of the Blind president Mark Riccobono's complaint is that accessibility keeps getting treated as a periodic favor rather than settled law.
The stakes are sharpened by what else is happening in the same corpus: publishers have been winning decisively against the Internet Archive's ebook lending, including the loss of its appeal in the Controlled Digital Lending case. As mainstream ebook adoption locks in DRM-protected formats, the exemption is one of the few remaining legal channels for accessible e-texts.
First-order effects
- Blind readers and the libraries serving them keep a legal right to circumvent ebook DRM, but only for another three-year window before they must re-petition the Copyright Office.
Second-order effects
- Assistive-technology developers and disability organizations like the NFB must budget recurring advocacy campaigns every rulemaking cycle, while publishers — emboldened by their courtroom wins over the Internet Archive — face little pressure to make accessibility a built-in feature of DRM schemes.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, disability access to digital texts stays structurally dependent on administrative grace periods even as courts narrow fair-use alternatives, hardening a system where access rights are renewable permissions rather than statutory guarantees.
The trend: Digital-rights exceptions are being administered as renewable permissions through the Copyright Office's triennial process just as litigation narrows broader fair-use channels for ebooks.