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A Software Lending Library in Kansas City?

Tech Soup

The Kansas City Public Library. They have developed a way for anyone with a Kansas City public library card to use expensive professional applications like those from Adobe and Microsoft without owning them. They are building a free software lending library. How The Lending Library Will Work. The User Experience.

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Accessibility Excitement in Geneva

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The nexus for this work is the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations agency that deals with such matters. The ABC would wrap together efforts such as TIGAR as a sharing portal, capacity building efforts for countries trying to create accessible book services and looking at issues like licensing.

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

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

For example, all residents with the qualifying disabilities in Australia, Denmark and Qatar, to pick just three examples, now have free access to Bookshare thanks to our joint efforts with local and national disability groups in these countries. We would like to see a global norm comparable to the system that has worked so well in the U.S.

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Objecting to Accessibility Weaseling

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Last week, the National Federation of the Blind and 22 organizations serving people with disabilities filed detailed objections to a petition from a group of makers of e-reader devices led by Amazon to be exempted from accessibility requirements under the relatively new Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.

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

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

We have an array of copyright exceptions that cover the activities of archives and libraries, especially fair use and the copyright exception that benefits people with disabilities. By this, I am not just talking about the publishing business, but also the nonprofit libraries committed to universal accessibility.

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Caltech: Founding Values

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

It wasn’t too many years ago when our pharmaceutical industry more or less argued that people with AIDS in Africa should die rather than to license their medicines for low cost manufacture. I want to advocate for “giving the sleeves off your vest” strategy! But, allow the benefits of technology to reach far beyond the top of the pyramid.

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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. •