On September 20th he appeared before the U.N.'s 184-nation World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on behalf of blind folks who want to "read their way into light," and opined that the current copyright system denies them an equal opportunity. During his talk, Wonder stated, " . . . please work it out. Or I'll have to write a song about what you didn't do."
At issue is the current legal copyright landscape which results in institutes for the blind in various countries being required at times to make multiple audiobook versions of the same work, according to Richard Owens, WIPO's director of copyright and electronic commerce. Owens asserts that this can limit access to blind and partially blind people in poor countries, which often cannot afford to create their own versions of books concerning everything from science to entertainment.
The U.N. agency has been trying to modernize its global copyright framework to better account for new media, including audio books. The goal is to create a clearinghouse for the visually-impaired such that published materials can be traded around the world and translated into new, readable formats without the costs inherent to the current system.
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