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Commercial Availability: The Poison Pill for Marrakesh Treaty Implementation

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

That’s the lobbying position of some companies in the intellectual property field when implementing the new Marrakesh Copyright Treaty. Libraries for people who are blind or dyslexic are the primary source of accessible books in audio, large print or braille. That would pretty much defeat the purpose of having a library.

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

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. I love to hark back to Thomas Jefferson’s take on ideas. “He My idea was completely legal!

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Accessibility Excitement in Geneva

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

There was also an associated effort called the Trusted Intermediary Global Accessible Resources (TIGAR) project, to ease the exchange of accessible book files between libraries for the blind and print disabled. The publishers were asking for support of an approach that the WBU and Bookshare had campaigned hard against in Marrakesh.

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Why We're Blacking Out Sites: PIPA and SOPA

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Copyright hawks like Rupert Murdoch and the MPAA have attacked this movement as being for piracy, against jobs, and dangerous. Like almost all libraries, we're scrupulous in following the law, because we're serving incredibly important communities. But, we're not for piracy. Don't Break the Internet!

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Why Your Country Should Ratify the Marrakesh Treaty

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. How You Can Help Benetech is happy to support the World Blind Union in its campaign for the Marrakesh Treaty ratification and implementation.

Copyright 100
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Optimistic about Marrakesh Treaty!

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The World Blind Union’s ( WBU ) Right to Read campaign for ratification of the Marrakesh Treaty just concluded two days of meetings in Berlin, Germany. The attendees were mostly the regional coordinators of the campaign, and the news was good. I was able to share some of our plans at Benetech around implementing the Treaty.

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Increasing Accessible Publishing Globally

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. thanks to our domestic copyright exception.