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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

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Why We're Blacking Out Sites: PIPA and SOPA

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Part of my objective was to show the unintended consequences of Internet censorship bills like SOPA and PIPA (SOPA's Senate buddy bill), responding to alerts from organizations I trust like the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Don't Break the Internet! In November, I wrote a blog post entitled: Why I’m Scared of the SOPA bill.

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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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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. Going forward, new countries that want to abide by the Treaty provisions would need to directly ratify it.

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Bookshare without Borders: #1/3

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Bookshare International Library We’re always thinking about new ways in which Benetech could go deeper and help many more people. Bookshare , our flagship literacy program, is the world’s largest accessible library and currently serves more than 230,000 members with visual and learning disabilities.

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Increasing Accessible Publishing Globally

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The third movement is the effort to make copyright exceptions a global norm , thus enabling easy import and export of accessible materials. Benetech’s Bookshare is the world’s largest accessible online library dedicated to serving people with print disabilities. thanks to our domestic copyright exception.

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Pew Internet and American Life Project: Future of the Internet

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

The Pew Internet and American Life Project has issued its annual forecast of “ The Future of the Internet.” It offers predictions for the Internet in 2020. Here's the high points: The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the Internet for most people in the world in 2020.