So, given that this already exists, I’m not sure why the audiobooks-for-yuppies market is being touted as any sort of support system for the blind at all. RFB&D already seems to focus on an array of books far broader than what the for-profit market could ever cover profitably, as evidenced by their asking for readers with all this domain-specific knowledge.

This being the case, how would a collapse of the audiobook market hurt the blind, exactly? It’s not like Kindle yuppies were buying a lot of math- and computer-science-intensive audiobooks in the first place, and it’s not like the very narrow catalog of audiobooks which publishers /do/ produce would be all that much work for volunteers to replace.

The anime fansub community has a lot to teach us about this issue. Here is a broad wealth of audiovisual material, all of it in Japanese, and inaccessible to a small but passionate market of American viewers. The Japanese producers don’t have the resources or inclination to subtitle it all in English, but English speakers want to watch it.

So a grassroots community of translators crops up and takes it on the problem itself, and produces unauthorized versions of this anime which are accessible to English-speakers.

Imagine if, instead, this volunteer community decided to provide this type of service, but only legally. A translator can show up to a screening of an imported anime, and /manually/ type out the subtitles on a projector as the lines are spoken. And once the film is over, the translator’s work is deleted (because saving it would constitute an unauthorized derivative work!). The next time anyone else wants to watch that same movie with English subtitles, another translator’s services will be required.

I think that community would very quickly face a volunteer shortage too. I certainly wouldn’t stick around if my efforts were being squandered in this way.

Of course, that solution is a totally unrealistic pipe dream, mainly because of copyright.”

Feel free to volunteer at one of the established reading for the blind programs instead of bitching or exploiting the blind in your anti-copyright crusade:

Currently, RFB&D is facing a shortage of specialized readers proficient in math, science, finance, accounting, computer science, foreign languages, and other technical areas. We also are in need of volunteers to read general K-12 titles.

http://www.rfbd.org/support_1.htm

My second point had nothing to do with blind people at all. If, as you say, the audiobooks for the blind are provided by the goodwill of the publishers, then they aren’t a revenue stream anyway. My point was about those ‘Kindle-owning yuppies’.

Clearly there are some sighted people out there too who want to be able to hear their data rather than see it. In your opinion, which of these two cases is more likely?

a) Kindle-owning yuppies who want to hear their data instead of see it are only willing to pay the cheap Kindlebook price rather than the higher one for a human-made audiobook, because they don’t find listening to a robot voice all that irritating, or

b) Kindle-owning yuppies who want to hear their data instead of see it are so spoiled that they can’t bear the irritation of that damn soulless monotone voice when they listen to Oprah’s latest pick in the car, and are willing to pay the premium for a nice, comforting human tone.

If a, then it’s not clear to me how much value the human audiobooks provided to the blind anyway. Since the publisher could never profitably produce enough audiobook material to cover everything a blind person might want to read, I expect blind people are already stuck listening to robo-voices most of the time if they want to read anything too far off the beaten path, unless they’re lucky enough to have a friend or a volunteer at their disposal.

If b, then human audiobooks will always have a place in the market, at least for as long as text-to-speech software remains irritating-sounding. The blind will continue to have the benefit of proper recordings for only that material which the publisher can profitably sell to the Oprah-in-the-car set, and that set will keep on paying for that material.

As for what would benefit society most, I’ll only point out that if our goal was to provide the widest possible array of human-voice material for the blind, then we could hardly do better than a crowd-sourced solution. As you point out, the publishers themselves are the bottleneck; If they can’t make the audiobook profitably, then they won’t make it. If we instead freed the publishers of that burden and set an army of amateurs and volunteers to the task of recording any book for which there was a demand, the potential benefits for accessibility are I think pretty obvious.

Of course, that solution is a totally unrealistic pipe dream, mainly because of copyright. But if the world was really concerned about accessibility issues above protecting the copyright holders’ revenue streams, this problem would be trivial.

Are you now going to tell us that the NFB (founded in 1940 and describing itself as having “more than 50,000 members” and being “the largest and most influential membership organization of blind people in the United States”) is a fake group too?

In the meantime, the Associated Press, the Baltimore Sun and Publishers Weekly have reported about these protests. Do you consider them “sub-Palin reporters” (whatever that means)?

There is also some link to the show on booktv.org if you are blind or just can’t read because of too much time online. From Book TV:

Neal Bascomb recounts the fifteen-year search for and capture of Adolf Eichmann in Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivor’s and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi. Mr. Bascomb chronicles the SS officer’s life under a false identity in Argentina and the worldwide manhunt that led to his capture. Neal Bascomb discusses his book with Elizabeth Holtzman, former democratic congresswoman from New York, and the author of the Holtzman Amendment that pursues deportation of Nazi war criminals as well as denies them immigration to the United States.

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also if Kindles are really better for the blind than computers (which can be obtained from corporate donations of there used computers) some of you Web 2.0 groups might want to start a Kindles For The Blind, instead of exploiting the blind in your gripe with Amazon and publishers.

This is an OPEN question and the answer should depend on what is best for society. (you do realize that by forcing one price, the Kindle price will likely rise since it’s now the lowest)

As for your second point, the blind don’t have to pay (even the postage) for most for the read-for-the-blind programs. I don’t think the blind should have to pay, but it’s up to the charity of most publishers, nonprofits and government programs (and yes to rule out people like Seinfeld’s George, you should have to prove your disablity)

Does anyone know one blind person who spendt $400 for a Kindle to read who is upset, or is just some cheap astroturf fake group of upset Kindle-owning yuppies, that does not know much about established blind programs, using what every angle they can?