by Mark Aronica[2] and Erica S. Perl[3]

Where are we now?

During the past decade, distinct changes of technology, social infrastructure, and the market have occurred.  Consequently, textbook publishers are trying to respond to these changes and to reexamine their traditional business model.  However, at the same time, new distribution challenges, security vulnerabilities, and market expectations are converging on the publishing industry.  Publishers are quickly realizing the inherent difficulties in responding to these innovations while attempting to maintain and manage the property rights in the content that is being distributed. 

Protecting the intellectual property rights of digital assets can feel futile.  Although legal and policy mechanisms have been established and technical deterrents are in place, they are constantly circumvented.  To make matters worse, it is expensive to build these digital locks, but cheap to pick them.  And once the lock is picked, it is easy to duplicate the key and make it available to others.  Thus, it can be extremely difficult to act as a gatekeeper.

Perhaps the reason for this problem is that there are only a limited number of organizations interested in developing mechanisms for protecting digital content, but a seemingly endless number of individuals bent on circumventing these protections.  Although they are not well-organized as a group, individuals who are interested and skilled in breaking digital security mechanisms view it as their duty to demonstrate the weaknesses of the security measures.  If a security mechanism withstands early assault, the hacking community often responds in ways that suggest it believes its reputation is at stake.  It then continues its attack until it succeeds.

The attitude of entitlement to information, goods and services (including copyrighted material) is not limited to the hacking community.  It is now pervasive among many Internet users.[4]  For example, look no further than the massive appeal of the now-defunct Napster service and the volume of current users on similar services.  The anonymity provided by the Internet and the common perception that distributing protected materials is a victimless crime also encourage this phenomenon.  Initially, internet users developed the interest in getting as much “free stuff” as possible, and hackers made use of the tools necessary to guarantee access, but a barrier remained: there was no method to facilitate widespread distribution.  However, this problem was quickly solved, and then perfected as numerous peer-to-peer networks emerged.  This was represented through networks such as Napster and more recently Gnutella, leading to a paradigm shift in the area of information distribution.  Once these networks were established, the line between distributor and consumer was blurred.

Peer-to-peer type networks like Napster eliminate the role of the central distribution point by making every user a potential contributor to one massive, yet distributed, warehouse of digital materials.  By eliminating the centralized processing of search and distribution functionality, these networks eliminated the single point of control and hence eliminated a clear target for legal action.  This is to say that every user of the network becomes equally complicit in the illegal behavior of distributing protected materials.  Furthermore, peer-to-peer technology also enables every participant to be both a consumer and distributor with a potential audience of millions of other users globally.

Behavior that was once perpetrated by only a few is now being practiced daily by the general population of Internet users and could be considered now part of the ritual of commerce in our society.  To not acknowledge this practice when surveying the consumer landscape is to ignore a key aspect of the future of information interchange.  It is within this landscape that publishers must now try to protect the rights of the content producers without limiting access to the materials that the purchasing population has come to expect.  One recently introduced federal bill has taken the innovative step of proposing that copyright holders be insulated from liability for digitally blocking the unauthorized distribution of their protected works.[5]

It is not clear if the proliferation of disparate file formats and applications is due to the nascent market and the evolutionary stage of its associated technologies, or if it is because of true market competition. One would have to assume a bit of both.  However, development of proprietary technologies usually means additional costs to the producer. Therefore, if a standard were to emerge that supported the mutual needs of all sides--the producers, the software and hardware manufactures, and the consumers--then there is
certainly an increased opportunity for greater innovation, benefiting the consumer and lowering cost for developers. A format that would meet all these requirements would need to support the digital rights management (DRM) needs of the publishers, the accessibility hooks required by the product manufactures, and ease of use by the consumer.

The current fractured state of the industry has produced results that rarely meet the needs of all three constituents. Either assistive technology (AT) products must interface with non-DRM protected content, or DRM protected content only allows for limited AT features. The loser in this current environment is the consumer due to the lack of access to popular titles and core educational materials.

What challenges exist?

A key technical challenge going forward will be finding the right balance between providing content in a format that protects the copyright holder, while at the same time allowing it to be processed by third-party AT applications, such as screen readers.  Unless AT applications can gain access to the text, the content is inaccessible and the AT applications are unable to perform their intended services.  The recent article, The Soundproof Book[6], described how unsuspecting screen reader users can find themselves in such a predicament.

Assistive Technology applications can generally gain access to text in one of two ways.  Sometimes, the text is provided in a recognized format that allows the AT application to directly open up the text file (the “one-step” approach).  If this does not work, the user may be able to use a desk-top application, such as a web browser or word processor, to display text in such a way that the AT application can then retrieve the content (the “two step” approach).  In the latter example, the AT application takes a parasitic approach by attaching on top of the desktop application in order to extract the text.  Both approaches are common in AT applications, but both present problems for those who seek to maintain security over copyrighted material.

The problem with the “one-step” approach is that of the file formats that can be read by AT applications, there are not yet any that are both widely accepted and secure (and, thus non-viewable by other desktop applications).  Thus, most copyright-protected materials intended for use only by AT applications can also be opened and read by anyone with a standard suite of desktop applications. 

The only companies that support a secure approach are those that both define a proprietary secure file format and supply the corresponding viewer application.  For example, Adobe and Microsoft provide both closed file formats (PDF and LIT) and viewer applications (Acrobat and Reader).  Furthermore, both of these applications also supply a set of functionality that could be considered beneficial to individuals with disabilities.  However, certain accessibility features (including text-to-speech) are shut off in these applications if the document being viewed is encoded to the highest level of digital rights management (DRM) protection.  One can assume it is this level that will become the default DRM encoding selection set by most providers concerned with securing their content.  Content providers might presumably make this encoding selection without ever understanding the barriers created as a result.

The other way in which an AT application can gain access to text is to attach on top of a desktop application.  For example, a screen reader can process content that is displayed in a web browser.  This works because the screen reader is able to select the text in the web browser window and paste it into its internal memory for processing.  However, from a security standpoint, there is a problem.  The browser isn’t able to easily distinguish between an approved AT application and one that is attempting to pirate the content.  The browser is therefore unable to decide when it is appropriate to limit access.  Therefore, any user is then able to copy-and-paste the content into another application for subsequent distribution.  Conversely, some desktop applications do not allow any application or person to select the text being displayed.  This solves the security issue at the expensive of eliminating accessibility.

More recently, Microsoft has released an accessibility programming layer called Active Accessibility that programmers can use to establish a trusted relationship between desktop applications and AT applications.  Although the layer wasn’t originally targeted at solving the information security issues discussed, it does allow for a more discrete method of passing text to AT applications.  However, the Active Accessibility layer isn’t cross-platform and only works in a Windows-based environment.  This causes problems for the field of education with its high percentage of Macintosh users.

It seems unrealistic that a single application could ever be developed that would create a closed environment to protect the security of the content while also supplying all the functionality currently delivered through third-party AT applications.  However, a specialized secure format, named DAISY-NISO, is being developed specifically for individuals with print disabilities.  If widely adopted, this format or another like it might help to serve a large percentage of those needing digital text while still satisfying publishers’ interest in maintaining a high degree of security.  Unfortunately, access to the much broader selection of non-specialized materials currently available to the general population would still be unattainable.