Share your ebooks! Give those long scng hours a purpose!

[jradi]

Just stumbled on this site by accident. Turns out that it's LEGAL under U.S. copyright law to scan books for the purpose of making texts available to visually impaired or the handicapped (Yes, I looked up the statute to be sure). Read more about it at this website and feel free and protected to upload your scanned/converted texts. Know that all those hours you put into scanning your books can go to legally helping someone else have access to texts that they otherwise would never have access to:

Plus, it looks like they're doing some sort of credit system ($2.50 per scanned book), I don't know what the credits are used for, maybe a tax write-off or something?

http://www.bookshare.org/about/volunteerOverview

I came across it by reading the comments to this post on boingboing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/13/yo ... iters.html

[daniel_reetz]

wow!!!

[the.traveller]

This was an interesting thing to read. Although the original link is not correct anymore.

I stumbled upon the following text at the bottom of the page:

John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Signs Agreement to Provide Titles to Bookshare

April 14, 2011 - Partnership Expands Bookshare Collection and Makes it Easier for People with Print Disabilities to Gain Access to a Wide Range of Titles.

Now I am a foreigner and I am reading it as follows.

I have no printer so I have a "Print Disability" so I am eligeble for gaining access to a wide range of titles from the publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Now I only have to figure out what is ment by "gaining access" and how to do it.

[LHemphillix]

This is an awesome thing to know, but anyone wanting to do this on a large scale would be well advised to research the details. A shared book or two here and there, no big deal, but if you're making an enterprise out of it either for- or non-profit, best to make absolutely certain you're not running into any copyright liability. As noted above, the original link doesn't work. Is there something up to date available?