Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

Our new announcement about the Department granting Bookshare supplemental funding to convert open content textbooks to accessible formats went over very well. We're promising to do highly accessible versions of 80 open content textbooks. There's even a quote from Governor Schwarzenegger in the press release!

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Accessibility Content Open Copyright 150

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 12, 2014

HathiTrust, a unanimous three-judge panel concluded that digitizing books in order to enhance research and provide access to individuals with print disabilities is lawful on the grounds of fair use —that is, a limitation and exception to the exclusive rights granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work ( Section 107 of the U.S.

Accessibility 205

Accessibility Copyright Law Library 205

Forum One

MARCH 12, 2024

Wednesday at the 2024 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC), we’re pleased to be leading a session all about artificial intelligence (AI) for mission-driven social media. Here are a few use cases we’ve seen (and used ourselves): Brainstorming content topics. If you aren’t attending NTC, don’t worry!

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Social Media Images Video Media 80

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JULY 9, 2018

Today, we are poised at a moment in time where we can transcend the limitations of past book technologies and bring the power of books to all humans. However, as a technology, printed books come with serious challenges for some communities (like blind people) that technology can unlock. Love of the print book.

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Accessibility eBook People Copyright 135

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

DECEMBER 3, 2011

This last September, Benetech won a 3 million dollar award over one year from OSEP for a project we call Leveraging Impact through Technology, or, very appropriately, LIT. Through the LIT project, we’re adding many new innovations to the groundwork laid by the B4E project, with a focus on three core areas: content, tools, and utilization.

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Impact Technology eBook Student 140

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. Thus far, more than 75 countries have signed the Treaty, and in June India became the first country to ratify it.

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Accessibility Celebrate United States Copyright 194

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

APRIL 24, 2018

As the prototypical technology social enterprise, Benetech became one of the first organizations using technology to solve social problems rather than seeking to make maximum financial returns. One of the first reactions was “no one has ever come to tell us of their plans to steal our content in advance before!”

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Mentoring Copyright Law Photography 167

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 26, 2013

On August 1, 2013, I testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet on the subject “ Innovation in America: The Role of Technology.” We don’t create solutions from scratch: our innovation is adapting existing raw technology to meet the needs of the users in the social sector.

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Internet Copyright Law Open Source 142

Tech Soup

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

We hope you like our content, and we want you to use it! Content created by TechSoup is available to reuse by any nonprofit or library (for free!), This means you can take our content, post it on your website, or use it in your trainings or newsletters, and you don't even need to ask us for permission.

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Content Free License Images 36

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. Make no mistake, we are for the Internet, we are for jobs, we are for legal access to content, and we are for human rights and freedom of speech. But, we're not for piracy.

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Site Copyright Wikipedia Law 185

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. The second principle is sourcing locally relevant content. We have built Bookshare International upon three principles.

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India Literacy United Kingdom United States 225

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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Morocco United States Copyright Library 127

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. These three movements all bode well for improved access to books and other content, but there remain challenges before we can fully realize the vision of equality of access to information.

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Accessibility Global eBook Copyright 155

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. Technological Protection Measures. How Does the Treaty Meet this Goal?

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Copyright Law United States Library 158

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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Copyright United States Library eBook 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 21, 2011

We have the technological innovations to help these children and their families and educators, who are looking for strategies to aid their success. with a legally qualifying print disability per the Chafee Amendment to the Copyright Act. Nor can they buy accessible content from the commercial sector.

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Student Accessibility Copyright Library 173

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 12, 2014

At Benetech, we always ask ourselves how our existing successful programs can reach more people who need our services and how we can apply technology in new ways to enrich and improve more lives. Recently Bookshare has reached two major milestones in its efforts to bring reading equality to disadvantaged populations around the world.

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Literacy eBook Global Audio 129

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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Copyright India Library United States 158

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 30, 2013

There is no better place to engage with colleagues about new technologies, changing business models, fresh ideas, and shared standards. You can read much more about this in Jim Fruchterman’s blog post, “Upholding the Social Bargain: Bookshare and Copyright Compliance.” See you there!

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Accessibility eBook New York City Social 171

Media Cause

DECEMBER 21, 2022

The full version of Dall-E, which can achieve incredible levels of near-photorealism, has more robust content filters to disallow the tool from getting too close to actual famous faces. . I asked Rob Shaw, Art Director at Media Cause , for his thoughts on the implications of text-to-image technology: . Rights Issues. Inclusivity.

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Arts Marketing Images Generation 52

Whole Whale

MAY 19, 2023

The issue with the amazing range of images that AI can create is that your content begins to lose the visual consistency of your brand. Objects and Content : Next, consider what specific objects, contents or subjects you want to include in the image. Do you want a portrait, a landscape, an object, an abstract design?

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Images Build Library Generation 52

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

However, the time has come when we need a really smart attorney to join Benetech and help us navigate the intersection of technology and social good. We’re operating at the forefront of copyright limitations and exceptions, both in the United States and globally. We serve human rights activists in more than 100 countries.

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United States Library Copyright License 134

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

NOVEMBER 15, 2009

Accessibility of digital media has been repeatedly and systematically denied because of digital measures to “protect” content. A great (bad) example is Adobe, one of the leading ebook technology vendors, who just introduced their Digital Editions. These approaches usually lock out people with disabilities. Why have a legislature?

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Accessibility Adobe Copyright eBook 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

MAY 27, 2015

One attendee pointed out that the cross-border sharing of content wouldn’t be of much use unless you had the USA or Europe on board: that’s where a lot of content will come from for people with print disabilities in the rest of the world. Let’s hope the USA does ratify this year (I'm certainly part of that effort)!

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Germany Mexico North America India 100

Whole Whale

APRIL 13, 2022

Technology. What technologies (platforms like WordPress or Drupal and development environments like Ruby or PHP) do they have experience with? Do they have expertise in a particular technology? If so, ask them when it’s not appropriate to use that technology? Are they able to articulate back to you what you’re after?

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Process Question Proposal PDF 52

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. Content contained in square brackets in the draft is still being negotiated, and the remaining content is assumed to be agreed (at least, we certainly hope so!).

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eBook Library Alternative Authoring 193

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JUNE 23, 2014

How can we use technology in a new way to improve people’s lives that is an order of magnitude better? Can we help stimulate the creation of far more technology-for-good ventures? Technology currently serves privileged groups through tools that provide access to education, literacy, health, and justice.

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Literacy eBook United Kingdom Accessibility 158

Byte Technology

MAY 27, 2016

They may not own the domain name; they may be barred from taking the site to another server or designer; they may have become saddled with a proprietary Content Management System (CMS) that requires a professional to access and utilize; the list can go on and on.

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Websites Design Site Law 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 7, 2009

Although our efforts on RtF are mainly around serving people with disabilities, we are open to thinking more broadly about how these technologies could benefit more people. This is unlike Bookshare, which is for the 1-2% of the population who qualifies for the copyright exemption. I ran into a Stanford MBA student at TED, Joy Sun.

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Education Africa Student Journal 100

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

There have been occasions where new technology was introduced and the publishers made the money and the authors did not get a share. And in exchange, the SFWA encourages their members to voluntarily give Bookshare their content (high quality files remove/greatly reduce the danger of errors creeping in).

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Accessibility eBook Amazon Audio 100

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. The signals from a few European countries on its likely content have not been encouraging.

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Accessibility Global Copyright Law 133

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

JANUARY 20, 2010

Some folks call newly developed knowledge "intellectual property," but this obscures the fact that we don't treat ideas and content the same way as we treat a house or land. I live in Silicon Valley, a place that exists to drive creation of new and exciting technology. And it seems to work pretty well for stimulating creativity.

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Proposal Government University Switzerland 100

Care2

MARCH 4, 2009

57) Mobile (15) Nonprofit Benchmark Studies (15) Nonprofit Events (36) nptech (8) Online Advertising (5) Online Advocacy (47) Online Fundraising (97) Online Marketing (59) Online Organizing (32) SEO (3) Social Networking (109) Technology (31) Trends (51) Video (27) Volunteering (2) Web 2.0 (60) Remember, content is still king.

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Social Media Content Practice Web 38

Care2

JANUARY 30, 2014

Technology. What technologies (platforms like WordPress or Drupal and development environments like Ruby or PHP) do they have experience with? Do they have expertise in a particular technology? If so, ask them when it’s not appropriate to use that technology? Technology nptech' If so, what?

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Web Language Photography Drupal 59

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

MARCH 1, 2007

I'm very interested in the whole notion of open content and creative commons licensing in the nonprofit space. I've found that my generation has a habit of teaching ourselves new technologies, and I am no exception. How did you get interested in copyright laws and their impact on human rights? Sarah Davies, FreedomforIP.

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Copyright Law Seattle Brazil 50

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

AUGUST 25, 2007

No copyright claim to this booklet or its contents is made, provided acknowledgement is given to MicroCredit Enterprises and/or the authors and provided that this material is not reproduced for sale. So, I hope this will become a trend, to give program investors more tools to do PRIs and lower their transaction costs.

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Program Copyright Structure Environment 100

Museum 2.0

FEBRUARY 21, 2007

Media release forms are (typically) used in formal situations—promotional shoots, program recordings—in which the museum, not the user, dictates the circumstances and use of the content. But if we’re moving towards more integration of user content in museums, ownership can’t be swept under the rug. The interactive “owns” the content.

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Content Museum Podcast Policy 20