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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. 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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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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Bookshare without Borders: #1/3

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. This is a most exciting development: it means that anyone with a cheap MP3 player or a phone that plays MP3s can have access to our books.

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What is in the Treaty of Marrakesh?

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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. This is satisfied by having a law like the Chafee Amendment in the U.S., Articles 5 and 6.

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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. Bureaucratic barriers to utilizing a copyright exception, as proposed by some publishers, makes the cost even greater.

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My remarks just made at WIPO today

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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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Accessibility Excitement in Geneva

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

This is totally the “how sausage and law are made” view, so don’t read this unless you want to know more about global accessibility in detail! WIPO has a mandate from its member states, and is working to address the need to change laws and get more accessible books flowing. law works: the one that made Bookshare possible.