Stevie Wonder Copyrights: Singer Backs Books for Blind

(CBS/AP) Stevie Wonder appeared before a United Nations agency yesterday to urge global copyright overseers to help the blind access billions of science, history and other books they cannot read.

The blind musician told the U.N.'s 184-nation World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) yesterday that more than 300 million people who "live in the dark" want to "read their way into light."

At issue is audiobooks.

Currently, agencies for the blind in different countries can be required to make multiple audiobook versions of the same work, said Richard Owens, WIPO's director of copyright and electronic commerce.

That leads to higher costs, which are passed on to listeners. It also limits access to audiobooks in poor countries, Owens said.

The U.N. agency has been trying for six years to revamp its global copyright framework so that it better accounts for new media, such as audiobooks. But the problem of access for such copyrighted material goes to the heart of a growing crisis in the world of copyright protection, as the internet increasingly muddies laws that were created for traditional media.

Wide exceptions exist for books in Braille, but WIPO officials say there is confusion over how these benefits can be translated into the digital age.

Wonder, 60, wants officials to cut through the red tape and figure it out. He told the diplomats: "Please work it out. Or I'll have to write a song about what you didn't do."

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