Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 15, 2014

One year ago, on June 28, 2013, at a diplomatic conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, the World Intellectual Property Organization ( WIPO ) agreed on a historic international copyright exception for people with print disabilities. a11y accessibility blind Bookshare copyright IP Marrakesh Treaty print disabilities visual impairment WIPO'

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 24, 2018

Gerry quickly did the legal research and came back to explain that my idea, which seemed like it should be illegal, was 100% permitted under an obscure provision of the copyright law! I went to Gerry with the idea for Bookster. He also firmly suggested that I needed to change the name. He took the idea one step further.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Getting some kind of licensing deal is critically important, because it will take many years for the Marrakesh Treaty to be fully implemented with its copyright exceptions. In particular, they wanted the group to endorse that a copyright exception under Marrakesh exclude works that are commercially available.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 7, 2013

First, it makes creating a national domestic copyright exception an obligation of countries that ratify the Treaty. Second, the Treaty allows for easier import and export of accessible versions of books and other copyrighted works. How Does the Treaty Meet this Goal? It does that in two main ways.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 3, 2016

That’s the lobbying position of some companies in the intellectual property field when implementing the new Marrakesh Copyright Treaty. Our experience successfully building Bookshare under the United States copyright exception, which has no such commercial availability limitation, informs this strong opinion.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 9, 2018

I believe it is a combination of copyright exceptions and business model innovations. For the content of books, this flexibility is expressed in ideas like public domain, when the copyright owned by the author or publisher ends at some point. Remember how crucial the Section 121 copyright exception was to creating Bookshare?

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 26, 2013

In my prepared statement, I explained why well-balanced intellectual property laws inspire technology innovation and social good, and described how our Bookshare initiative models the good that copyright exceptions can create. To make this possible, we must keep the balance in copyright.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 18, 2012

Copyright hawks like Rupert Murdoch and the MPAA have attacked this movement as being for piracy, against jobs, and dangerous. Today, we're joining what is probably the largest online protest in history , by blacking out significant portions of the Benetech website, as well as our Martus and HRDAG human rights websites.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 19, 2013

Our library is made possible both by a domestic copyright exception that makes it possible for us to add any book requested by a blind person to our library, as well as strong cooperation with publishers who provide many of their books directly to our library for free, including the rights to serve people in certain other countries.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 5, 2013

I’ve been actively advocating for an international copyright exception model that would greatly benefit people with disabilities, as anyone who has read my blog over the years can attest! copyright exception. After all, Benetech’s Bookshare initiative is the largest online library serving people with print disabilities in the world.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2013

The goal of the Treaty is to make a copyright exception for the blind and other people with disabilities that stop them from reading print, and to make import and export of accessible content legal. Bureaucratic barriers to utilizing a copyright exception, as proposed by some publishers, makes the cost even greater.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 16, 2011

Statement of Benetech to the 22nd Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights at the World Intellectual Property Organization June 15, 2011, Geneva, Switzerland • Greetings from California’s Silicon Valley! Now, more than 30,000 current copyrighted books are available globally on Bookshare to thousands of users. •

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

That's a huge difference compared to copyrighted works that we convert under the copyright exemption, which we have to keep under tight controls to restrict copyrighted works to only the use of people with bona fide print disabilities in the U.S. Since they are open, we can get them and do the adaptations for accessibility.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2015

This historic international copyright exception treaty paves the way for a future in which people who cannot read regular printed materials can have equal access to books, regardless of where they live. There is still much to do, however, before the treaty takes full effect.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 20, 2013

That treaty should replicate the successful copyright exception here in the U.S. award Fruchterman a11y Migel AFB Ferrell Bookshare accessibility blind copyright dyslexia Helen Keller copyfight SCCR treaty ebooks' We hope you’ll join us on this journey.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MARCH 3, 2016

The creation of Bookshare was made possible because of an enlightened copyright law exception. And, that American copyright exception was the inspiration for the Marrakesh Treaty! Our nonprofit organization operates Bookshare , the largest online library in the world that focuses on the needs of people with these disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2010

with print disabilities, with more than 70,000 copyrighted works in our library, the majority of which have been created under the US copyright exception by volunteers, mainly people with disabilities themselves, helping each other. • We now have global permissions for around 8,000 copyrighted books out of our 70,000. •

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 7, 2013

We’re grateful to our socially responsible publishing partners who give us world rights to their titles, even though they are not required to do so under international copyright law. This is a most exciting development: it means that anyone with a cheap MP3 player or a phone that plays MP3s can have access to our books.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 24, 2010

and similar copyright exceptions as a starting point. And, if a copyright holder doubts that your organization meets the requirement in making an accessible copy, they are welcome to file a legal complaint of copyright infringement and make the case. The concept of TIs uses U.S. In the U.S. And, the U.S.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 8, 2010

A Policy Update from an engineer, Jim Fruchterman of Benetech June 8, 2010 The international copyright negotiations in Geneva around a proposed Treaty for the Visually Impaired (“TVI”) have been steadily heating up. It has a statement encouraging national copyright exceptions for people with print disabilities as a Good Thing™.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

The third movement is the effort to make copyright exceptions a global norm , thus enabling easy import and export of accessible materials. thanks to our domestic copyright exception. Unfortunately, we can’t export these books, as other countries have copyright laws that we wouldn’t violate.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

Through this three-year project—made possible with support from the Lavelle Fund for the Blind as well as India’s adoption of a new copyright exception for people with print disabilities —we will pilot Bookshare International at scale in India.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Section 121 of the Copyright Act, also known as the Chafee Amendment (17 U.S.C. Tags: copyright blind Bookshare Chafee. Section 121) , defines a special class of organizations known as authorized entities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

with a legally qualifying print disability per the Chafee Amendment to the Copyright Act. Benetech is working on a new program that will serve these students who are not qualified under the copyright exemption. There are some 7.5 million students (15% of the U.S. They deserve an equal shot at learning and realizing their potential.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 27, 2015

We’re doing a ton of work with partners in India , the first country to ratify it, to allow people in India to take full advantage of India’s now-favorable copyright environment. Additionally, we have over 200,000 copyrighted accessible book titles already available in most countries in the world.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 15, 2009

Provisions designed to handle copyrighted materials could conflict with fundamental exceptions in copyright law like fair use of copyrighted works and the Chafee Amendment. These approaches usually lock out people with disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

I’m thrilled to share with you some of the recent amazing impact of Bookshare , a Benetech Global Literacy initiative and the largest accessible online library of copyrighted content for people with print disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

We’re operating at the forefront of copyright limitations and exceptions, both in the United States and globally. The recent Indian copyright amendment that creates an exception similar to Section 121 in the United States, which makes it possible for us to set up a Bookshare-style crowd-sourced library in India with local partner NGOs.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 15, 2010

DC this week and Geneva next week (international copyright). I'm now on the road for more than 5 weeks on combo business trips and family vacation. As I headed out the door, I ran into Scott Rains and we had a picture taken of Scott in his Brazil jersey (after the U.S., I'm a big Brazil fan too).

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 18, 2007

This runs so counter to the normal overreaching of trademark and copyright owners, like the NFL's attempt to stop a law professor from posting the snippet from the Super Bowl showing how ridiculous their copy right claims were as explained on Techdirt: DMCA Takedown For Professor Showing How Copyright Owners Exaggerate Their Rights.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Because Bookshare is only available for people who qualify under a very narrow copyright exemption. Check out this O'Reilly's announcement tat their ebook bundles now include DAISY talking book format files to see the fabulous work they're doing. Why is this a big deal?

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

If people starting taking audio versions of their Kindle books and distributing them, they would of course be violating copyright. Tags: Kindle Kindle2 Authors Guild copyfight copyright blind amazon.com NFB. The Kindle having text-to-speech is a presentation option, not a format of distribution.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

The latest session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) just concluded last week. If it indeed is simply a place where any authorized entity (broadly interpreted) can reasonably get added to a resource list, it might be helpful.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 30, 2013

You can read much more about this in Jim Fruchterman’s blog post, “Upholding the Social Bargain: Bookshare and Copyright Compliance.” Our commitment is to provide access to books for those who are unable to read a traditional print format and to do so without harming the economic interests of authors and publishers.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 9, 2010

copyright law, our volunteers scanned the books they wanted to read and then were able to upload them to Bookshare so that others could enjoy these books as well. Using a provision of U.S.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

We have top leaders from the Department, the disability community including students, publishers, the Copyright Office, academia and other experts.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 20, 2008

What is even cooler is that Perseus Books, Patrick's publisher, reached out to us during the production process to make sure that the book was available to people with print disabilities.

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