I call it twisted because you will come to the exact same conclusion.
A lot of online news outlets have been reporting on a proposed WIPO treaty that would allow cross-border sharing of books that are made in formats accessible to blind and other visually-impaired people. This treaty is being opposed by several media lobbies from several companies "on principle"; that is, they oppose it because they believe it fundamentally undermines the "right" principle of always extending copyright terms, limiting the market's options, and taking away as many rights as possible.
This is truly sickening. The media companies and their lobbies have really gotten on the wrong side of the argument here.
The issue is that these companies feel like by allowing cross-border exchange of books and such meant for blind people, copyright restrictions are somehow undermined.
How?
Won't allowing this only increase their market? If Britain had an oversupply of books for the blind and had to burn it (media companies' way) or sell it to blind people in Ireland (proposed treaty's way), wouldn't the latter only increase the market share of the companies?
I think it's truly pathetic to what low levels these companies have fallen. It's just another example of how copyright isn't to protect the original authors (this treaty can only help the authors), it's only to allow the big publishers and such to progressively take more rights away in the name of the "authors".
Since when were these "rights" (which are just rights to take away readers' rights) of "authors" (really just the big publishers) greater than the rights of blind people to read? Wouldn't this sort of action be illegal under the US ADA (1990)?
Good grief. These actions are so maddeningly inane and childish that I don't even know what to say anymore.