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Upholding The Social Bargain: Bookshare and Copyright Compliance

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Benetech's largest social enterprise is the Bookshare online library for people who are blind or otherwise disabled when it comes to reading print. copyright law. The publishing industry and disability organizations both agreed on this provision of copyright law. At Benetech, our commitment is to uphold that social deal.

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Accessibility Excitement in Geneva

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The context We’ve been supporting the World Blind Union and other groups in the pursuit of a Treaty for the Visually Impaired for the last five or six years. 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.

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Fascinating Meeting at the Copyright Office

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. copyright law.

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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. The second group of enablers of the brighter future are business model innovations.

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The Road to Accessibility without Borders: Celebrating the One-Year Anniversary of the Marrakesh Treaty

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. We hope that many other countries will follow India’s ratification.

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Big Meeting on the Treaty this Week!

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. I wrote a post at the time with the detailed suggestions from the expert group about the text of the draft.

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Our WIPO Statement on the Treaty for Access for People with Disabilities

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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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