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Upholding The Social Bargain: Bookshare and Copyright Compliance

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

copyright law. The Section 121 copyright exception (often known as the Chafee Amendment after the Senator who introduced it in 1996) makes it possible for Benetech to scan just about any book and make it available to this community. The copyright exception is designed to help only "blind or other people with disabilities."

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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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Commercial Availability: The Poison Pill for Marrakesh Treaty Implementation

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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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Bookshare without Borders: #1/3

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Reading a Bookshare-downloaded book on the BrailleNote portable device Launched in 2007 to replicate the proven Bookshare model internationally, our Bookshare International library has already grown to serve members in more than 40 countries , many of whom are in the developing world.

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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 I had never heard of it.

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Donor Spotlight: Lavelle Fund for the Blind

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Soon afterwards in 2007, we won our first major award from the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), which, in turn, allowed us to build Bookshare into a national asset. Moreover, Bookshare basically breaks even in the United States thanks to contracts to provide the services, from the U.S.

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Towards Global Access for the Print Disabled

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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 draft can be downloaded from WIPO. This draft can be downloaded from the DAISY Consortium.