There are over 10 million visually impaired people just in the US who are being blinded by the DMCA. On the back page of Software Developer, Warren Keuffel has a commentary (free reg) that summarizes what he found to be issues still brewing over the use of the DMCA to prevent people from implementing technology designed to translate eBooks into Braille. XML is being used now to facilitate the translations of eBooks and other electronic formats and to help disabled people get simple access to reading material that others of us may take for granted. The DMCA effectively blocks many of these new innovations (go figure). Is short, the American Federation for the Blind has sent comments the US Copyright office, Congress is looking at the issue, The Association of American Publishers is fighting it, all the while fair-use and disabled students continue to suffer.

For those of you who bought tools like the TeleZapper (or rolled your own), "Castel Inc., a maker of automated dialing technology, boasts that its DirectQuest software is immune to the TeleZapper." Additionally, it, "also includes a feature that lets salesmen transmit any phone number or text message to residents' caller ID displays." There are still ways to fight the estimated 19 million calls per day (6.8 billion/year), but passing the out of service tones might not be one of them any longer.

"Rain" posted these tones in a prior discussion.