Proposed section 32 really needs to be understood as an interim measure. The context is that it's interim.
What it means is that it allows associations working with persons with perceptual disabilities--the associations typically are non-profit or under-resourced, as there's very little private industry there, unfortunately--to be able to afford, in CNIB's case, to have a library that has 86,000 titles; to be able to do all of the manipulation, etc., required in order to create an alternate format of that material and house it, store it, deliver it, host it on a web; and to be able afford that without having to incur the additional expense of paying royalties.
Now, we buy the books--I want to be clear there--but we have the option of being exempt from buying more than one copy, etc.
In a perfect world, in a world that would work much better and really increase the equity between the availability of accessible library materials versus regular print materials or the print versions, be they digital.... Because right now only about 10% is available in alternate format through a library service, ours or Quebec's or otherwise.
A perfect world would be publishers that were able to work out a business model that worked for them, that worked for the rights holders, outside of the framework, necessarily, of the legislation, that allowed for the production of accessible files, master files or whatever, that we could simply receive; or, even better, publishers that simultaneously produced accessible alternate format along with their mainstream format so that in fact the two become one. Mainstream format becomes alternate format at the same time.
There are examples of that. Technologically we're moving there. Technologically, in terms of not the material itself but the device to use it, the iPad tablet....And I have no stock in Apple--