Dimitri Skylarov got jail time and brutal treatment just for making pdf files readable. Something necessary for people with sight problems, for example.
What I'd really like, is an E-Ink device about the size of a sheet of letter-writing paper (A5), based on an open platform (BSD, Linux, etc.), with a touchscreen. It would make not only an excellent platform for textbooks and reference, but also for taking notes and drawing.
I'm half-tempted to build one of these for my own use; anybody know where I can get an A5-size E-Ink display?
Well, I'll be sure to vote with my cash and only buy books that allow TTS. I spend a LOT of money on books (I am a bookworm) and would like the ability to listen to them sometimes.
And as for the publishers who disallow TTS, we'll.. there's always certain IRC channels and bittorrent networks. If they intend to fuck me over, they I likewise them, I say!
Hopefully the madness will stop one day. I never bought any DRM music but then I bought a bunch of stuff since DRM walls came down and I was able to do as I please with my purchase. Somewhere down the road there is an economic incentive for the publishers to make readers happy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimitri_Skylarov http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_v._ElcomSoft_Sklyarov
Lessig's 2001 writings were months before the arrest and the whole ElcomSoft saga.