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For on January 17, 1984, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that consumers could tape their favorite TV shows and watch them later without the copyright holder’s consent. 417 (1984), also known as the “ Betamax case ”, is a landmark copyright precedent that has had enormous implications for the media economy. copyright law.
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.
On Monday, congressional leaders unveiled their massive spending and coronavirus relief measure, including a handful of controversial copyright measures civil liberties activists fear could penalize internet users for everyday online behavior. Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images. Congress’ $2.3
Four major book publishers have filed suit against the Internet Archive for copyright violations relating to the Open Library project , setting the stage for a major legal fight over one of the internet’s longest-running ebook archives. It’s a long-standing complaint from publishers and authors’ groups.
Benetech, my nonprofit organization operates Bookshare, the largest online library dedicated to serving blind and print disabled people. Our library is unusual, in that our charter is to serve all people with print disabilities of the world, not just those in our country.
HathiTrust, a unanimous three-judge panel concluded that digitizing books in order to enhance research and provide access to individuals with print disabilities is lawful on the grounds of fair use —that is, a limitation and exception to the exclusive rights granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work ( Section 107 of the U.S.
We’re against piracy, and have made commitments to authors and publishers to encourage compliance with copyright law. Stopping fund raising and subscription revenue for Bookshare, the largest online library for people who have print disabilities. Bookshare is an online library for people who can’t read standard print books.
There was also an associated effort called the Trusted Intermediary Global Accessible Resources (TIGAR) project, to ease the exchange of accessible book files between libraries for the blind and print disabled. But, the Treaty does lean much more in the direction of a copyright exception without a commercial exemption.
GeForce Now users can sync their Steam libraries to their accounts with Nvidia’s new Game Sync feature. Compatible games will appear in the My Library section of Game Sync, Nvidia announced. But searching for games in your Steam library that were compatible with GeForce Now was a bit of a slog.
Copyright hawks like Rupert Murdoch and the MPAA have attacked this movement as being for piracy, against jobs, and dangerous. Like almost all libraries, we're scrupulous in following the law, because we're serving incredibly important communities. But, we're not for piracy.
After four commercial publishers filed a lawsuit earlier this month, the Internet Archive ended its National Emergency Library program earlier than planned, the organization said in a blog post (via ArsTechnica ). million books for people unable to get to classrooms or libraries during the coronavirus pandemic.
Consider how the accessible online library Bookshare – an initiative of Benetech , a Silicon Valley non-profit that builds technology solutions addressing social problems – is transforming the lives of American students with print disabilities. Roughly 1–2 per cent of students in the United States meet these requirements.
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.
Guest Blog from Amy McNeely, Bookshare Librarian This past week, April 12th through April 18th, was National Library Week. Every year, the American Library Association picks a different theme for the occasion. This year’s theme was “Worlds connect @ your library.” Bookshare is a unique library. at its core.
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.
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.
Twitch published a blog post today with the relatively anodyne title “Music-Related Copyright Claims and Twitch.” Twitch was unprepared for a sudden onslaught of copyright takedown notices from the music industry that started back in May. What was in it, however, was anything but. The bottom line?
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. •
The US Copyright Office has dealt a significant blow to video game preservation efforts by denying a request for a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) exemption, allowing libraries to provide remote access to preserved video games. The decision, announced last week, marks the fourth time since 2015 that the copyright.
However, as the founder of the Bookshare online library, we have a great deal at stake in how the Treaty gets implemented. First, it makes creating a national domestic copyright exception an obligation of countries that ratify the Treaty. What’s in it; what does it mean; how does it affect Bookshare members?
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.
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. •
The Internet Archive back in March created the National Emergency Library, a controversial program that made more than 1.4 million eBooks available to borrowers without any wait times. The idea was to assist students through the remainder of the academic year and make it easier for ordinary citizens to access.
I’ve been actively advocating for an international copyright exception model that would greatly benefit people with disabilities, as anyone who has read my blog over the years can attest! After all, Benetech’s Bookshare initiative is the largest online library serving people with print disabilities in the world. copyright exception.
Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) selected our successful Bookshare library as the provider of accessible materials to every student in the U.S. with a legally qualifying print disability per the Chafee Amendment to the Copyright Act. There are some 7.5 million students (15% of the U.S.
The latest session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) just concluded last week. Since many of our organizations operate as libraries, we note that commercial availability of a book rarely impacts the availability of that book on the shelves of a library.
And when the idea of a peer-to-peer ebook library came to me, it was George who I went to with the idea. That treaty should replicate the successful copyright exception here in the U.S. award Fruchterman a11y Migel AFB Ferrell Bookshare accessibility blind copyright dyslexia Helen Keller copyfight SCCR treaty ebooks'
That’s the lobbying position of some companies in the intellectual property field when implementing the new Marrakesh Copyright Treaty. Libraries for people who are blind or dyslexic are the primary source of accessible books in audio, large print or braille. That would pretty much defeat the purpose of having a library.
The Google Library question is a hot one, and we believe that this project will lead to better access for disadvantaged people. The core question is whether Google's Library program is a fair use of copyrighted material. Good summary in the attached review post: Does Google Library violate copyright?
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. Counterproposals have been made, governments have been engaging with rights holders, consumers and NGOs (or not!)
Section 121 of the Copyright Act, also known as the Chafee Amendment (17 U.S.C. Bookshare actively cooperates with the Library of Congress in the provision of Bookshare’s services to people with disabilities, through its National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress (NLS).
Benetech’s Bookshare library is living proof that real, transformative change happens through partnerships and by helping people unleash their talents and energies. The Bookshare breakthrough was to put our users in charge of the collection; we created a crowd-sourced library built by and for the people it serves. copyright law.
We're really proud of the rapid growth of our Bookshare online library for people with print disabilities. The legal framework for Bookshare is the Section 121 copyright exception in federal copyright law: all Bookshare users must have a disability that qualifies under that section. serving students with print disabilities.
When Bookshare was first created, we conceived of the concept of a digital library built by the people who use the library, instead of solely by librarians deciding what people with print disabilities should read. Tags: volunteer blind library Lyons Bookshare. Using a provision of U.S. Bookshare Volunteers are the best!
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.
The Internet Archive was recently found guilty of copyright infringement in a case related to its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) service, which provides users with free access to a digital library of books. US District Judge John Koeltl decided that the IA infringed the copyright of four publishers when it.
I'll be speaking out more on copyright issues in the coming months. A recent article mentions why Benetech is concerned about orphan works: obscure works are hard to find the copyright owner, and it costs to much to hassle with. Orphan works article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian News.
Bookshare As followers of this blog know, Benetech's largest social enterprise is the Bookshare online library for people with print disabilities. You can read much more about this in Jim Fruchterman’s blog post, “Upholding the Social Bargain: Bookshare and Copyright Compliance.” What is it and why is it important?
We’re operating at the forefront of copyright limitations and exceptions, both in the United States and globally. The recent Indian copyright amendment that creates an exception similar to Section 121 in the United States, which makes it possible for us to set up a Bookshare-style crowd-sourced library in India with local partner NGOs.
The issue that Soundtrack is solving is pretty simple: if music is copyrighted, you can’t use it while you’re streaming unless you have the rights to those songs. If you do happen to use copyrighted music during a broadcast, there’s not a whole lot Twitch can necessarily do because it’s being played live.
Bookshare, Benetech’s pioneering digital library for people with print disabilities, celebrated its 10th birthday last night with a terrific party that was attended by many of our long-time friends and supporters. copyright law. As a result, we quickly became the largest online library for people with print disabilities.
We are joining with our peers in the disability and library community in a joint statement to strongly encourage the Senate to ratify the treaty and for Congress to implement the minor legislative changes recommended as part of the package. The creation of Bookshare was made possible because of an enlightened copyright law exception.
The NMPA sued Roblox in June for letting users upload copyrighted songs into its shared library of game-building assets. That deal was similarly open-ended, but it included an explicit change to how Twitch handles copyright violations, something Roblox and the NMPA’s announcement doesn’t mention.
In my Fall 2011 President's Update , I mentioned some of our incredible recent achievements in this core program, including the amazing milestones of our Bookshare library. Our innovative approach has revolutionized the traditional library for people with print disabilities. In the U.S.,
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