Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

The nexus for this work is the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations agency that deals with such matters. The Marrakesh Treaty was signed last year, and now the efforts are ramping up to ratify and implement the Treaty, with the goal of helping overcome the book famine faced by people with print disabilities.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 14, 2009

Last Friday I spent almost two and a half hours in a wide-ranging conversation with Maria Pallante of the Copyright Office (and two other folks whose full names I didn't write down). copyright exemption for serving the print disabled is commonly called the Chafee Amendment: Section 121 of copyright law. national experience.

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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! After all, Benetech’s Bookshare initiative is the largest online library serving people with print disabilities in the world. copyright exception.

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Morocco United States Copyright Library 127

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! Our collection has grown from 70,000 books to almost 110,000 books in the U.S.

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Qatar Accessibility People Copyright 154

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. It’s expensive to make braille books. The biggest challenge for access is that it’s expensive. For example, we run Bookshare in the U.S.

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Copyright India Library United States 158

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 17, 2015

They include people who are blind, visually impaired, have dyslexia, or have a physical disability that prevents them from reading regular printed books. The Marrakesh Treaty makes it easier for nonprofits, schools, government agencies, and individuals with disabilities to convert inaccessible print books into accessible equivalents.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 8, 2013

I was delighted to speak at the November 15th joint plenary session on “The Right to Read” campaign to achieve a world where published books are accessible and available to all individuals who are blind or have other disabilities. This shift is already happening in major markets: Amazon.com now sells more digital books than print books.

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Accessibility Global eBook Copyright 155

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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South Africa Copyright Ghana India 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 20, 2013

Earlier today, I attended the American Foundation for the Blind’s (AFB) National Leadership Conference in Chicago where I received the 2013 Migel Medal. He started Computerized Books for the Blind the year before we started Benetech, and became one of our earliest partners. It was named for the first board chair of AFB, M.C.

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eBook Award Copyright Syria 221

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MAY 3, 2010

Source: Pratham Books. Note from Beth: During my trip to India in February, I was introduced to a nonprofit children's book publisher in India, Pratham Books. “It was set up to fill a gap in the market for good quality, reasonably priced children’s books in a variety of Indian languages.

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India Strategy Skype Remix 99

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. Counterproposals have been made, governments have been engaging with rights holders, consumers and NGOs (or not!)

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Accessibility Global Copyright Law 133

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 5, 2015

Twelve years ago, the Fund made its first grant to Benetech, in support of the then newly launched Bookshare , our accessible online library for people with disabilities that get in the way of reading print, including visual impairments and dyslexia. This pilot paved the way for our work in the education field.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2014

Our Bookshare online library is continuing to multiply its impact. With Bookshare, our student members can access and read the books they need—in the classroom, at home, and on the go—and have a fair opportunity to succeed at school just like their peers without disabilities. What about yet another order of magnitude beyond that?

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Literacy eBook United Kingdom Accessibility 158

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 26, 2014

In particular, electronic books (or e-books) offer the possibility of dramatically improving access for students with disabilities – and for disadvantaged children everywhere. This is because e-books (unlike traditional print) can easily be rendered in many different ways and presented in the format that best suits one’s needs.

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eBook Accessibility United States Student 203

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 29, 2011

We're really proud of the rapid growth of our Bookshare online library for people with print disabilities. We're up to more than 125,000 users, with over 95,000 books available, and our users are now accessing content at a rate of more than million downloads per year! What is the school signup process for Bookshare?

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Student Accessibility New Jersey Learning 145

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

APRIL 18, 2007

Photo Sharing around an organization's programs/mission - Global and National Youth Day. Unlike library subject cataloging, which follows a strict set of guidelines, tagging is completely unstructured and freeform, allowing users to create connections between data anyway they want. the work of copyright holders.

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 13, 2011

Bookshare Hits 100,000 Members Boy reading at a computer with teacher in the background.Since the beginning of 2009, we’ve tripled the number of people with disabilities Bookshare is serving with our accessible library of ebooks. We just added 847 books to the collection in one day—that’s more than we used to add in a month!

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Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 24, 2015

It’s the week of the United Nations General Assembly and the Clinton Global Initiative. I had a joint meeting (both Republicans and Democrats) with the key Senate Judiciary Committee staff who are the copyright experts, and learned a lot about the process. Student privacy. Enough said! Roger Martin).

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