[bksvol-discuss] Follow up from Jim on my email
- From: <Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:05:06 -0800
Thank for Gerald for tipping me off to look at the list sooner than when
my daily digest arrives. Let me clarify a few things!
One, I don't think that our active volunteers have been a problem, and
it just happens that I'm on this list and not the general Bookshare.org
list. I'll ask one of our team to post it there for me and monitor any
questions.
Second, there are several areas of practice that should be addressed:
A. Sending electronic books downloaded from Bookshare.org (either
finished or in process) to third parties. I think everyone is pretty
clear that's a violation of your user agreement and a no-no. There is
flexibility around this when it comes to downloading for a student as
our school members do, or someone who is assisting a member get their
books, or prepare Braille, etc. And, if you use Bookshare.org to create
a Braille book, we're ok with you circulating it to other people in
hardcopy form.
B. Grabbing books from somewhere else (cracked ebooks, pirate lists,
state repositories, etc.) and submitting them to Bookshare.org. We
don't want them, because we don't want books where someone broke the law
or a license to get them to us.
C. Sending books you scan for Bookshare.org to someplace illegal. Also
uncool, and against the volunteer agreement. We don't want a publisher
to discover a Bookshare.org book on some warez site, compare it to our
copy (which we will let them do) and find it is the same scanned book.
Why are following these rules important? Well, as a volunteer with
Bookshare.org, you are actually appointed an agent of ours, and our
Section 121 exemption is wrapped around what you do, making something
that is generally illegal (scanning books and giving them to lots of
people) ok as long as we follow the exemption. You have special
liability protections under U.S. law. If an author or publisher sues
Bookshare.org because they think we are violating Chafee (or whatever)
on a specific book, and it turns out that you scanned that book, you are
protected as a bona fide volunteer from liability as long as you are
operating within the scope of your volunteer job description.
I could go on and on about this stuff, but it's probably not needed. We
don't want to be heavy-handed, or nannies. We are not seeking out
problems, or trying to split hairs. I'm not worried about situations
that look just fine. I am very worried when our books show up on the
Internet for free. That's a big problem, and one I can't be flexible
about.
My main message to you is: help protect the Bookshare.org community. As
leaders in our community, your opinions matter most. If we keep
Bookshare.org's reputation with the publishing industry as a community
of people who take following copyright law seriously, I think we have a
real shot in the next few years to getting a big slice, maybe even a
majority, of our books in high quality electronic form directly from the
publishers. I think we all share a dream of every person with a print
disability in the world have access to books on reasonable terms.
Upholding our promises so far has been a key part of our path to
realizing that dream.
Jim Fruchterman
President and CEO
Benetech
480 California Avenue, Suite 201
Palo Alto, California 94306 USA
+1 650 475-5440 extension 106
Fax: +1 650 475-1066
jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx
www.benetech.org <http://www.benetech.org/>
The Benetech Initiative - Technology Serving Humanity
Benetech is a nonprofit organization
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