RE: a question on scanning

[Peter Hirtle <pbh6@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 03:56 PM 11/9/2009 +0100, Humphrey, Brenadine Ms wrote:
>I think the question with Sec. 121 is the "for an authorized entity"
>stipulation. Although I agree, it seems likely that the original material is
>no longer protected.

That is a great observation on 121 (and why I am glad that I didn't 
write about it in the book!).  Authorized entities are:

>a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary 
>mission to provide specialized services relating to training, 
>education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind 
>or other persons with disabilities .

I wonder, though: do you think that such an organization could task a 
school to prepare a digitized work for a visually-impaired student on 
its behalf?  In other words, could the university act as an agent for 
the organization?

I find it interesting that Hathi will make special text versions of 
digitized books available to Michigan students who can't use print 
versions.  See 
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=page;page=help#RestrictedPermission. 
No legal justification for this service is provided as far as I can see.

BTW, this is one more reason to eagerly await the Google Books 
Settlement, since special access to digitized books for visually 
impaired individuals is part of the settlement agreement.

Peter