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The Case for Copyright Exceptions and Fair Use

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

For on January 17, 1984, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that consumers could tape their favorite TV shows and watch them later without the copyright holder’s consent. 417 (1984), also known as the “ Betamax case ”, is a landmark copyright precedent that has had enormous implications for the media economy. copyright law.

Copyright 196
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Upholding The Social Bargain: Bookshare and Copyright Compliance

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

copyright law. The Section 121 copyright exception (often known as the Chafee Amendment after the Senator who introduced it in 1996) makes it possible for Benetech to scan just about any book and make it available to this community. The publishing industry and disability organizations both agreed on this provision of copyright law.

Copyright 158
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eBooks #2: So you want to e-publish? Mechanics…

Zen and the Art of Nonprofit Technology

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do to get my novels out in the world, and have been greatly influenced by Cory Doctorow in terms of copyright (or, more accurately, copyleft ). Obviously for me, publishing eBooks is going to be something I do at some point, perhaps sooner rather than later.

eBook 168
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Bringing Millions of Books to Billions of People: Making the Book Truly Accessible

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The miracle of ebooks What if we had the ability to overcome these accessibility barriers, barriers that affect most of humanity, not just people with identified disabilities, wouldn’t we have the moral obligation to act? We can use the same ebook file to deliver the content ten different ways. We can do better!

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Advancing Reading Equality with Bookshare’s Exponential Growth

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. a11y accessibility Bookshare Braille DAISY ebooks Global Literacy print disabilities Reading'

Literacy 129
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Social DRM: It’s About Equal Access for All

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Next month, I will be heading to TOC a couple of days early in order to participate in a W3C Workshop on eBooks and the Open Web Platform, where I will be talking about Social DRM (Digital Rights Management). You can read much more about this in Jim Fruchterman’s blog post, “Upholding the Social Bargain: Bookshare and Copyright Compliance.”

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Mass Market Accessible Books

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

We take their files and convert them to the DAISY format which is a digital format designed specifically to create accessible materials for people with print disabilities. The big advantage of DAISY over typical scanned files is that DAISY includes much more extensive navigation (chapters, sections, page numbers, etc.).