Distinguished Toastmaster
BUSINESS & BRANDING COACH . LIFE & LEADERSHIP STRATEGIST MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER SERVING ENTREPRENEURS &
MAIN STREET

CHAFFEE AMENDMENT IS NOT ABOUT STEALING ARTS-iSTs BLIND  [ You Are On This CLICK Page ]

_______________________________________________________
ANATOMY OF A JUDICIARY WITNESS WHOSE NAPSTER MODELED BUSINESS LIABILITY IS PUSHED ON TO THE BLIND :
_______________________________________________________

Legislators rely on John and Jane Doe Public to speak out. And sometimes there are just too darn many dots connect to make an explanation short. This is one of those pieces. Settle in. Pull up a cigar and a beer. Ladies

It isnt easy trying to make the whole world happy. Sometimes, like the expression, “All That Glitters Is Not Gold” there is more to witnesses put before Legislators to testify before the Committee at hearing, the Legislators wish they knew before rather than after the fact especially when it comes to putting Trojan Horses and Sows Ears Made Into Silk Purses before the committee.

One of the witnesses, a Palo Alto constituent of Congresswoman Eshoo and Senators Feinstein and Boxer according to a League of Womens Voters zipcode search of 94306,  built a business model based on an admitted by him format that is illegal, in fact Metallica had sued over this same model to distribute Copyright owner’s 2D(dimensional) IP(Intellectual Property) and ID(identity), after all what is a song without Metallica. It is just a song.

MOST aggregious is the witness’s “deliberate non profits” interpretive abuse of the Chafee Amendment and Title XVII definition of Fair Use in order not to pay Royalties and/or Fees to owners of Copyrighted materials the lifeblood of his “only” ever profitable effort. His word. The witness passed “Fall Guy accountability “away from his companies, multiple, to the end user- the Blind and legally impaired- using government grant money to perfect HIS vision…. a “power shift of user-created content.” The witness wrote “This was the first library for the blind that was actually built by people who were blind. The majority of our volunteers were actually people with a visual impairment. When these people scanned a book, they were empowered to share that book with the rest of the community.” (www.daisy.org/stories/jim-fruchterman-part-2) Of course, there is more to that quote.

Remember Napster…… so did Witness 5. Fruchterman wrote “Amazon meets Napster meets Talking Books, but legal!….Napster” because the community was actually responsible for all of the books in Bookshare. “Talking Books” because most of our users were using synthetic speech to gain access to the books they couldn’t read or read effectively in print form.” (www.daisy.org/stories/jim-fruchterman-part-2) Fruchterman said in one piece “ Concepts like fair use, open source and open content make our work much easier, since they reduce the transaction costs for less lucrative uses of intellectual property.” Less lucrative to whom? Fruchterman? Or to the Arts Owner of the 2D(dimensional) IP(Intellectual Property) whose Commerce needed to pay College Loans, tuition, insurance and put food on their table without beginning to adress conversations about buying a home. Priorities first. Sustainability provided by Intellectual Property Rights.

August 1st, Jim Fruchterman was one of five witnesses testified before Congress at the Judiciary hearing themed “INNOVATION in AMERICA: The Role of Technology. This was a me-too follow up to the July 25th Judiciary hearing themed “INNOVATION in AMERICA: The Role of Copyrights.” The other four of the five witnesses were Technopreneurs whose businesses evolved from personal need.

Jim Fruchterman’s Bookshare mantra is “scan once; share often.” Fruchterman told that to an interviewer from EdTechDigest in 2011 (http://edtechdigest.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/interview-sharing-books-with-jim-fruchterman/) Fruchterman gloated to his interviewer “that Bookshare was sparked in 1999, when my teenage son showed me how Napster worked. This Internet-based way to share music struck me as totally cool, but probably illegal!”

Fruchterman said “it occurred to me that we might be able to set up a service that allowed blind people to legally share files of digitized books.” Fruchterman tells interviewer after interviewer his Free Ticket is both Fair Use and the Chafee Amendment. Fair Use requires the piece be transformation and NOT “(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.” Fruchterman’s “Adjective Company” or “Adjective Umbrella” for his Human Rights work is “The Benetech® Initiative” under which flows his Human Rights work “projects”, Martus, The Human Rights Project, Miradi, Route 66, and Bookshare.

Hearings have protocol and procedures. Witnesses must sign “Truth In Testimony” Disclosure Forms. The hearing title, date are listed along with the witness’s name and entity(ies) they are representing. Their business adress and telephone number are listed then dedacted before posted on line, sorta silly in light of NSA and internet spying on citizens with EVERYTHING almost of their life either on line or in bundling sites like spokeo.com that traffick humans lives for a scaled fee. The more paid, the more data is listed.

”Truth in Testimony” links were posted on line for four of the five witnesses- Sparkfun Electronics, Snapstream Media, Rackspace and Benetech. Non for Indiegogo.

There are three more fill-ins on the TRUTH IN TESTIMONY Disclosure Form
4. Have you received any Federal grants or contracts (including any subgrants and
subcontracts) during the current fiscal year or either of the two preceding fiscal years that are
relevant to the subject matter on which you have been invited to testify?
❑YES ❑ NO
5. Have any of the entities that you are representing received any Federal grants or contracts (including any subgrants or subcontracts) during the current fiscal year or either of the two preceding fiscal years that are relevant to the subject matter on which you have been invited to testify? ❑YES ❑ NO

And Number 6 which directs the witness, “If you answered “yes” to either item 4 or 5, please list the source (by agency and program) and amount of each grant, subgrant, contract, or subcontract, and indicate whether the recipient of such grant was you or the entity(ies) you are representing. (Please use additional sheets if necessary.)”

One witness wrote in Number 6 “Please see attached.” Snapstream Media answered “Yes” to number 5. One witness just signed without filling in any of the “above” information in blocks 1-6. That witness was Rackspace’s Van Lindberg. Spark Fun Electronics didn’t need to adress Number 6. Answers to 4 and 5 were both No. And one witness answered “Yes” to number 5 and “No” to number 4. And didn’t write anything in Number 6, the disclosure box addressing grants, subgrants, contracts, subcontracts with clarification if the funds went to the witness, personally, or to the entity(ies) they represented. That witness as Jim Fruchterman from Benetech, he said.

Fruchterman is actually “from,” a founder/board member of multiple companies including Freedom Scientific, a company bio (Freedom Scientific Inc: Private Company Information- Businessweek) (http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=188412) lists Fruchterman as a Founder of Freedom Scientific the company Fruchterman stated he sold Arkenstone to to fund Bookshare. Freedom Scientific is listed on YELP, Hamburg Germany, as having an adress in St. Georg, Steintorweg 8, 20099 Hamburg Germany (http://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=computers&find_loc=St.+Georg%2C+Hamburg) Freedom Scientific also has a “European Center: in Tagerwilen Switzerland, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wkikpedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Scientific) . Only one company has exceeded its business plan, he told an interviewer. That company is Bookshare.org, a shared online library of scanned books for people with visual impairments that currently offers over 90,000 titles.” (www.afb.org/section.aspx?FolderID=2&SectionID=4&TopicID=472&SubTopicID=233), the company Fruchterman based on Napster’s illegal model, with a twist- using Fair Use and the Chafee Amendment when it came to file sharing Copyrighted Content.

As Fruchterman tells it “…I set out to form a deliberately nonprofit technology company to build reading machines for the blind, and that was how Arkenstone was born” with the blessing of Calera Recognition Systems and the rights to use their OCR technology. The new Arkenstone Reader hit the market at $5,000 compared to over $10,000 for the Xerox product. Fruchterman tells it best “Within three years, Arkenstone hit $5 million in annual revenues as the price of the product dropped from $5,000 to $4,000, to $3,000 and eventually down to $1,200, and the numbers of people annually getting reading machines went from a couple of hundred to five thousand. It is the only high-tech venture I’ve been associated with, for-profit or nonprofit, that has ever exceeded its original business plan.” (www.daisy.org/stories/jim-fruchterman-part-1)

Make no mistake, Bookshare is NOT free to the blind. “Bookshare is a subscription service. As such, it will be necessary for those wanting to become full Members to pay a membership fee using a credit card or other financial instrument, or have their fees paid by a third party (for example, U.S. students and schools are currently paid for by the U.S. Department of Education).” (www.bookshare.org/about/privacy‎) “Our business plan was to run a national ebook library on less than a million dollars per year. By relying on volunteer labor to create the collection, I figured we could operate with roughly five staff members. By doing everything virtually, we kept our costs down. We came up with what we felt was a highly-affordable price of $75 for all the books a person could read in the first year, and $50 a year after that.” (www.daisy.org/stories/jim-fruchterman-part-2) Five years earlier and $25 million later, after the machine mechanically scanned then said “There are the times that try men’s souls..” investor asked Fruchterman, “What’s the connection to the twenty-five million dollars we have invested in this firm?” (www.daisy.org/stories/jim-fruchterman-part-1)

The Benetech Initiative’s plea for donations on indicated tiered donation levels of $100 and $75 for reading initiatives of Benetech, $50 for Protect Witness and $75 on Uncover The Truth. (www.changingthepresent.org/nonprofits/show/157)

On August 2013 “Truth in Testimony,” Jim Fruchterman did not indicate on the Disclosure forms, he and/or his multiple business entities had received grants from the US Government. Which company exactly isnt quite clear to figure out even by looking Benetech on Guidestar.org. Benetech is the entity Fruchterman signing in to “Truth In Testimony” as testifying for. You see, Benetech is dba as Bookshare BUT Benetech is the name Benifitecent Technology Inc is doing business under, along with Benginneering. Somewhere in the sauce, too, is Freedom Scientific, who Fruchterman is on board with that used to be Arkenstone except Arkenstone got bought by Freedom Science who Fruchterman is on board with that allows him to run Bookshare as a deliberate not-for-profit. Website: http://www.freedomscientific.com . Industry: Computer Software . Type: Privately held . Company Size: Myself only . Founded: 2000 (www.linkedin.com/company/freedom-scientific)

Fruchterman and George Kerschel are part of the team that helped draft the World Blind Union proposal for a treaty Fruchterman says is being considered in International Negotiations. Awesome? NOT. Awful. The goal is to not pay authors and illustrators for their Intellectual Property while Fruchterman’s multiple companies keep rolling in their dough from Government grants, Venture Capitalists and Royalties owed to the 2D IP, Intellectual Property owners. Fruchterman cites already having gathered global rights from Scholastic, HarperCollins, Random House and Encyclopaedia Britannica. Fruchterman boasts “partnerships built with over ten publishers in India who are already granting us global permissions.” That is another matter for another day to look into FROM the documents up… as the expression goes.

Fruchterman posts “In August 2007, several people brought to my attention a new U.S. federal government competition being announced. Since we really didn’t get significant funding from the federal government, we didn’t keep track of federal competitions. But this one was very different. It fit Bookshare like a glove, and it was for $7 million per year for five years. But the proposal was due in a month.” First question, is who.

Makes sense yet? Don’t worry. One can only move the shells so many times in the New York City street game of ‘Pick the fast moving shell the ball is under.” House usually wins. This time, the House of Representatives, in understanding witnesses put before them for three minutes of questioning when trying to do right with legislation- in this case, seeking to preserve the Integrity of Copyright Law for the Arts- music, song, dance, sculpture, drawing, writing- 2D IP, Intellectual Property, and their Creative’

In the marketing world, the term is Idiot Proof Marketing- put what someone sees RIGHT in front of their nose so they go ‘oh, I see that.’ READ the DAISY INTERVIEWS Part 1 and Part 2. “On the last business day of the federal fiscal year, Friday September 28, 2007, Benetech was awarded a $32.5 million contract to deliver Bookshare for free to every student with a print disability in the United States.” The Reading Rights Coalition, representing 30 million people who cannot read, post “We estimate that there are about 15 million print-disabled people in the United States.” (www.readingrights.org/138) The contract assignment was very clear “deliver Bookshare for free to every student with a print disability in the United States.” Fruchterman says he only delivered to 80,000. That is 15,000,000 take away 80,000 equals a contract not fulfilled.

“Truth in Testimony” Disclosure forms are required, according to Clause 2(g)(5) of Rule XI of the House of Representatives, of witnesses “appearing in nongovernmental capacity” for the representations and testimony they are going to make to Congress.

Witness- Indiegogo helps people find funding for projects. Witness- SparkFun Electronics, Inc was founded by a DIY electronics and technology guy. Witness- SnapStream Media is probably making Paula Deens life hell. SnapStream is a video clip aggregator so Tweets and gaffes can be merged, synched into dicey slices for the likes of The Soups’ Joel Mchale. Witness- Rackspace/ Openstack host clouds. And then there was Witness- Jim.

Jim Fruchterman, President and CEO of Benetech, testified on behalf of Benetech. Fruchterman talked heavily about Bookshare. Bookshare is part of the details the public, didn’t learn about Benetech when Number 6 on Fruchterman’s “Truth In Testimony” was left blank.

Congress isnt about Committee. Congress serves the people with inquiring minds right to know. Congress can only go so far to advise witnesses how important Truth will be.

James Fruchterman dresses very well, duly noted, by the cut of his suit, the weave of its fabric and the warp of his tie. One only has to visit a Brooks Brothers store once to note the difference between a regular guy suit and a suit, well… worn by Jim. It was that observation elicited Jim to volunteer something about $6.5 million dollars from the Department of Education, a detail that should have fit in to Number 6 as details on the page itself or on “please see attached” as notated by Spark Fun Electronics. Jim Fruchterman lives large online, an open kinda guy, in photos, in postings through, a myriad of other sites and writing on Huffington Post. Fruchterman’s eight page Judiciary “testimony” was posted on line before the day of the Judiciary Hearing was over. (http://benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Congressional-Testimonty-Statement-of-Jim-Fruchterman-Benetech-08-01-2013.pdf) One problem. Witnesses testify for three minutes only. Ever testify before a hearing. Eight pages of single spaced typing (pica 12) does not divide in to Three Minutes unless one is racing without clarity. Handouts of Witness testimony are left on the hearing room side desk.

With details spread over hundreds of places about Jim, it took time to reconstruct who Jim Fruchterman for in Technology’s fight against the integrity of Property Rights given to the American people by the Founding Fathers. What wasn’t easy to connect, to locate, was the Government contract for $6.5 million a year, for a bunch of years, missing from Box 6, that Fruchterman talked about after the hearing was over- after all- it wasn’t rocket science to note the cost of the suit the former Rocket Scientist was wearing. July 22, 2013, Benetech’s Human Rights Program, the lead partner in a consortium was awarded a two-year, $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) to “enhance and expand our suite of digital security tools. Named “On the Frontier of Secure Technology for Human Rights Monitoring,” it is the largest individual grant in the history of Benetech’s Human Rights Program.”

This award was a few weeks before Jim Fruchterman left his “Truth In Testimony” Box 6…. BLANK. (http://benetech.org/2013/07/22/announcement-human-rights-program-receives-major-grant-to-advance-digital-security-tools/)

There appear to be other grants, too, referenced in Fruchterman’s online life. And donations for hundreds of thousands and million dollars from companies like IBM and Intel that were not in the day’s presented equation. Fruchterman received a donation of over $1 million dollars of chips he uses to build reading machines. IBM donated ViaVoice software, HP donates scanners.

Missing from a man/company that values transparency (http://benetech.org/about-us/mission-history/#sthash.9eVM280X.dpuf) were the real aspirations that Fruchterman held back on while testifying at the Judiciary Hearing, August 1 2013, that Fruchterman spoke openly about to Daisy.org, laying out his plan to get Intellectual Property in to serving the social sector (1) Ask the licenseholder to “do the right thing and allow use to take place” (2) change regulations to allow expections for the disabled (3) compulsory licensing, something Fruchterman calls “public interest exceptions” which might “interested in figuring out how to “gently coerce” IP-holders to part with their rights for limited, specialized markets” to permit people in very poor nations access to certain content without explicitly seeking permission, an idea Creative Commons circles are pushing, a license that would allow rights to be reserved in most nations, but permit widespread use and derivative products in certain poor nations or expansion of the Internet Bookmobile, a library of content that people in poor countries could print on demand for $1 a copy, currently restricting themselves to texts that are already out of copyright. Ever watch Africa’s “Top Model.” Ever watch Iraq’s Got Talent.

There is more to the eye. Isnt there always.

Content holders, the 2D IP, Intellectual Property, ID and Identity for the most part are not net worth wealthy compared to HP, IBM and Xerox. HP, IBM and Xerox’s giving Fruchterman’s company(ies) product is a tax deductible write-off. Content holders, the 2D IP, Intellectual Property, ID and Identity is money used to put a roof over their head, pay down tuition loans, send their kids to school and afford healthcare, let alone be able to afford the suit Jim Fruchterman wore to Capitol Hill.

Businessweek Magazine wrote in 2000, “Freedom’s mission is to change the world for people with sensory and learning disabilities by creating innovative, technology based products and solutions.” (www.thefreelibrary.com/Freedom+Scientific+Acquires+Arkenstone+Reading+Systems.-a062664389)

Freedom Scientific isn’t just “a privately-owned company dedicated to becoming the global market leader in the field of assistive technology.” It is the company that bought Arkenstone that became Benetech. But wait, what happened to Beneficent Technology Inc, and Bengineering and Benetech dba as the”Deliberate Not For Profit”? Bookshare® and Benetech® are registered trademarks of Beneficent Technology, Inc. (www.bookshare.org) Told you not to take your eyes off the hands moving the shells around. Fact is, neither Arkenstock nor Freedom Scientific are named on Guidestar.org as dba’ charity “Bookshare…” (Fruchterman’s only ever profitable beyond its business plan project.

Fruchterman’s Bookshare doesn’t pay royalties, don’t forget. And, Fruchterman wasn’t hiding his agenda, either.

Fruchterman is even more candid in an interview Fruchterman gave at the Berkman Center that Ethan Zuckerman (www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2004/09/03/) wrote describing Jim Fruchterman as a “social entrepreneur, big geek and generally brilliant software for social change dude. Jim is the founder of Benetech, a remarkably cool technology company focused on building products that bigger tech companies won’t build (for market reasons) but which have huge social impact.”

Fruchterman’s background plays a role in understanding the mindset of a witness who sees himself as a Robin Hood for the Blind and Oppressed. Fruchterman began working on computer vision in Stanford lab at Stanford that was working for the Deparment of Defense, DOD, on automatic feature recognition and smart bombs, funded with US dollars. Zuckerman writes “Jim found himself wondering if this technology could be used to help the blind read rather than to kill lots of people. His advisors were less interested in this idea, and he found himself helping run a company that cleaned up in the character recognition space, pioneering tools that did omnifont character recognition, able to recognize text irrespective of whatever font the document used.”
Zuckerman wrote “he (Fruchterman) mostly runs Benetech” a company interested in a small market “machines that read for the blind might be a $1-5 million dollar market per year.” Zuckerman writes “But when you’ve got a company that attempts to be profitable, but owned by a not-for-profit foundation, you can choose to take on projects that are marginally profitable and have huge social impact.”

The definition of Profitable is relative. To an author or illustrator of a book depending on their Royalties per copy sold to pay their daily float, $100 is profitable, $1.5 million would be winning the lottery.

Zuckerman writes “Benetech uses a character recognition card (developed by the other company he works with, I think…), a flatbed scanner, and some text to speech libraries from IBM and offers a reading machine at a price point closing in on $1000, much cheaper than competitive machines designed by Ray Kurzweil. The business broke even in year one and is now so profitable, Jim” a not for profit foundation “was able to sell it to a for-profit company for $5 million.” Benetech, before it was bought, was called Arkenstone. Arkenstone was sold to Freedom Scientific. Arkenstone’s name was changed to Benetech. Data on the internet states the money of the sale funded Bookshare.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benetech)

Fruchterman’s wizardry with company ownership and dba’s, didn’t start there. Fruchterman, a Cal State grad worked on spaceships. His first blew up on the launch pad but it wasn’t his fault, he made a point of making clear in his interview. Odd. His boss, another man and Fruchterman started Calera Recognition Systems, raising $25 million in venture capital. An “omnifont character recognition technology”, that is, a machine that could read just about any machine-printed font without requiring human training. To raise all that money though, we had to come up with real markets for a scanning machine, such as the insurance and legal markets.” Their competition was Xerox (www.daisy.org/stories/jim-fruchterman-part-1) Xerox got Ray Kurzweil a competitive Blind Reader developer.

Benetech got something better, an insight why, maybe, Fruchterman failed to fill in Number 6, August 1, on Capitol Hill. October 15, 2007. The headline reads “Bookshare Receives Five-Year $32 Million Grant From U.S. Department of Education”
(http://benetech.org/2007/10/15/bookshare-receives-five-year-32-million-grant-from-u-s-department-of-education/)

The details of the Press release are important enough to include the whole release. “The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Benetech’s® Bookshare® project $32 million over five years to significantly expand the availability of accessible electronic books and the software for reading those books.

Bookshare is the world’s largest accessible library of scanned books and periodicals. Working with state and local education agencies, schools, teachers and students, Bookshare will give all K-12, postsecondary and graduate students in the United States with qualifying print disabilities access to this library without charge.

The funding for this project was authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and was awarded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) of the U.S. Department of Education. According to OSEP, the purpose of the award is to provide free educational materials, including textbooks, in accessible media for use by students with visual impairments and other print disabilities in elementary and secondary schools and in postsecondary and graduate schools.”

The blog continues “The award will allow Benetech to add more than 100,000 new educational books to the existing Bookshare collection of over 34,000 titles. Bookshare will coordinate with state education agencies, schools and publishers to deliver the best quality content possible and lower costs to help meet their shared obligation to serve every qualified disabled student in the nation. The project expects to make extensive use of textbook files provided by publishers in the recently mandated National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS), to create high quality student-ready materials in digital audio, large print or Braille.

“We are going to reach out to every student, every family with a disabled student, and every school in the U.S. to offer them a chance to join the Bookshare community for free and transform the practice of making books accessible,” said Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman. “We expect to deliver millions of books to students through this new program over the next five years, using our very cost-effective online production and delivery systems.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookshare)

As of December 2012, Bookshare has “distributed over 172,000 books.” One million ‘take away’ 172,000 is a whole lot less than millions. One site suggests, hundreds of thousands may have been closer to 29, thousand that is.

Fruchterman continued, in the press release, explaining what Bookshare is and about Benetech. “Bookshare is an online community that allows people with print disabilities to legally download books and periodicals to be read as Braille, large print or synthetic speech. Those with print disabilities include people who are blind, those with low vision, severe dyslexia or a mobility impairment that prevents them from reading a traditional printed book.”

Fruchterman’s Blog states “Benetech is a Palo Alto, California-based nonprofit organization that builds software and provides technology for people with disabilities and for human rights and environmental groups. Benetech combines social conscience with Silicon Valley expertise to develop technology that has a lasting impact on critical needs around the world.”

Fruchterman wrote in his on line notes “My passion is seeing that technology benefits all of humanity, not just the richest 5-10%. Benetech is my passion realized: I help lead an incredibly talented team of technologists writing software solutions for disadvantaged communities and the nonprofits that serve them, solutions that the normal market will fail to deliver. © 2011-2013, Jim Fruchterman. All rights”

Benetech’s award repeated as per a July 27, 2012 posting in the EdTEch Times. “Benetech, the Silicon Valley nonprofit that uses technology for social change, has won a five-year award from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, to continue its groundbreaking work ensuring that educational materials are accessible to students with print disabilities through its Bookshare initiative. The award, named “Bookshare and Innovation for Education” (BI4E), allows Benetech to meet the challenges of the changing educational landscape by also creating free open source tools for content providers and working with those providers to make educational materials accessible from the start…” (http://edtechtimes.com/2012/07/27/silicon-valleys-benetech-wins-bookshare-and-innovation-for-education-grant/)

Charity begins at home, paying Creators for use of their 2D IP and ID, if one is a Charity that is. 2009, 2010 and 2011, Beneficent Technology Inc, Schedule C, Part 1(A), the “Complete if the organization is tax exempt under section 501(c)” and Part 1(B) “Complete if the organization is exempt under 501(c )(3)”? Left blank for Part 1(A) and n/a, not applicable, scrawled for 1(B). Adressing grants within the US and outside of the US, Forms 990 2009-2011 make for interesting reading.

Money isn’t an issue when it comes to paying for stuff other than Copyright Owners 2D(dimensional) IP(intellectual property) and Identity, it seems. Benetech is hiring. And, paying well. (http://benetech.org/want-to-help/work-for-us/#sthash.beum5pee.dpuf)

Benetech benefits being offered include competitive and comprehensive benefits package that includes medical, dental, life insurance/LTD/AD&D, flexible spending accounts, 401(k) retirement plan with company match, and personal time off for vacation, illness and personal business.
• Medical benefits (currently choice between Anthem Blue Cross or Kaiser) – Benetech pays 90% of premium for employees and their eligible dependents
• Dental benefits – Premier Access – employees pay 10% of premium for themselves and eligible dependents
• Vision benefits – VSP – employees pay 10% of premium for themselves and eligible dependents
• Short term disability
• Long term disability
• $25,000 life insurance policy
• $300/year transportation subsidy for using mass transit to commute to work
• Educational reimbursement – Up to $1,500 per year for qualified coursework
• 401(k) plan with a company match of 50% on the first 4% of salary deferral
• 20 day of PTO (for vacation, illness and personal business) per year; increased to 25 days after completion of five years of service
• 10 paid holidays – New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King’s Birthday, President’s Day, Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Day after Thanksgiving, Christmas, and one (1) floating holiday determined by Benetech

Jim Fruchterman self-describes as a social entrepreneur. Fruchterman’s Wikipedia posting states Jim is a former technology entrepreneur who creates social enterprises that target underserved communities. Bookshare is one of the Benetech “Projects.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Fruchterman) Martus is another. Benetech’s posting on Human Rights and “Martus” states the “open source software application developed by Benetech and made available at no cost for human rights defenders.” Benetech project Martus, is “ “basic IT tools for human rights groups”.

Fruchterman aids human rights activists to disguise their content was email which users encrypt their documents then publish locally or on a webserver or with a trusted entity like the Open Society Institute, the Catholic Church and others seeming to be unlike Assange, Anonymous or even an Edward Snowden. It seems human rights defenders is exclusive, to Fruchterman, of Copyright and Intellectual Property owners. Fruchterman writes in his “Mission and Truths” Benetech is about creating positive social change at scale…We’re not about profit; we’re about impact.” (http://benetech.org/about-us/mission-history/) Benetech’s request on The Giving Library self describes Benetech “with a focus on technology to serve humanity. We pursue projects with a strong social return rather than financial return to create innovative scalable solutions to challenging issues in society.” (www.givinglibrary.org//organizations/benetech)

Definition of Profit: the compensation accruing to entrepreneurs for the assumption of risk in business enterprise as distinguished from wages or rent; a valuable return : the excess of returns over expenditure in a transaction or series of transactions; especially : the excess of the selling price of goods over their cost (www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profit)

Who is Benetech? Well, Jim Fruchterman says it’s a legal entity “ Wikipedia says, Benetech was founded in Palo Alto California, in 1989, under the name of Arkenstone “as a not-for-profit social enterpries organization” creating “technology social ventures, such as Bookshare,”… the Route 66 Literacy Project, the Miradi environmental project management software, Martus (human rights abuse reporting), and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group which provided statistical evidence in the trial of Slobidan Milosovic.” It was created to provide reading machines for blind people. During the period 1989-2000, over 35,000 reading machines were sold in sixty countries, reading twelve different languages.” The Arkenstone reading machine product line was sold to Freedom Scientific in 2000. Arkenstone became renamed Benetech. Bookshare.org and Martus projects were funded from the Arkenstone asset sale. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benetech) Benetech posts “As a project of the Benetech® nonprofit organization, Bookshare meets the definition of an authorized entity. Our status was also confirmed by the U.S. Department of Education, when they made a major award to Bookshare, an award that could only be made to an authorized entity.”
Benetech’s “CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF ACTIVITIESYEARS ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2012 AND 2011” says different. It says Beneficent Technology Inc and Bengineering Inc dba as Benetech (doing business as) BENETECH (A California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation.) Or is it?
In the 2012 Audited Financials, the Organization and Nature of Its Activities are lies on Page 11 of the PDF. It says (1) Beneficent Technology Inc doing business as Benetech was incorporated as a nonprofit organization to develop technology projects, products and services to benefit humanity worldwide (2) Beneficent Technology Inc. has a for profit subsidiary Bengineering Inc which has been involved in providing engineering consulting services…. Both Beneficent Technology Inc and its for-profit subsidiary Bengineering Inc (collectively The Organization) operated under the Benetech dba and brand name…”

Total assets in 2012 for Beneficent Technology Inc and Bengineering Inc dba as Benetech were $3,597,404 (http://benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012_audited_financials.pdf)

Page 19 of the 2012 audited financials? Data missing from Number 6 of the Truth in Testimony Document Jim Fruchterman signed on behalf of Benetech… “Note 9- Grants and Other Federal Awards: US Department of Education 2012 – $8581857 of which $701,600 was included in the 2012 receivables which makes up approximately 66% and 72% of the Organizations total support and revenue for the same period. Three of the federal awards from the US Department of Education totaling $7,584,252 have a grant period that expired on September 30, 2012…”

Page 22 of the 2012 Audited Financials lists the Awards- Direct awards, pass through awards and Totals- $8,581,857 from the US Department of Education and $424,345 from the US Department of State- The National Endowment of Democracy for Promoting Democaracy in Guatemala and in Burma and for the International Programs to Support Democracy, Human Rights and Labor,’ and the National Science Foundation $6,057.

Sub Recipients Bookshare and LGBTI Africa , Page 24 and Page 25, , received $127000 and $136723 respectively. Both Bookshare and LGBTI Africa have CDA numbers- 84.327 and 19.345 respectively
By the numbers? Benetechs projects include Route 66 Literacy, Social Coding 4 Good, City Options, Bookshare, Human Rights, Martus, HRDAG, Miradi.

Support and Revenue $626,152
Royalties $4070
Engineering $1995
Donated services/products $406875
Bookshare Revenue (net of
direct expenses in 2012) $154,184
Human Rights revenue $606520
Miradirevenue $156,775
Route 66 Revenue $1680
Interest Income $1754
Total Support/Revenue $11,367072
Net assets released from
Restrictions
Satisfaction of purpose
restrictions $769,437
Satisfaction of time
Restriction $200,000
Total Support and Revenue $12336509

Total Expenses $12,287,340
Bookshare expenses $9035968
Human Rights $1298,563
Miradi $183,809
Route 66 $52,820
Bengineering $800
Management and general $973,815
Fundraising $30,109
Bid and Proposal $574,324
R&D $137,340

Change in Net Assets $48,961

Benetech tucks itself behind (https://www.bookshare.org/_/help/forms) wherein is alleged “Freely Distributable Material

This notice describes the copyright ownership, if any, and any legal restrictions on the use of this Bookshare.org digital material which govern your lawful use of it. Bookshare.org believes in good faith that this digital material is freely distributable, and is either in the Public Domain or available under a license that allows free distribution (such as a Creative Commons license…” and that “Bookshare.org and Benetech make no representations or warranties that this material is, in fact, in the Public Domain. However, Bookshare.org reasonably believes that this material is out of copyright, and thereby in the Public Domain and available for free distribution and copying on a Worldwide basis. On that basis, it makes it freely available to all persons, wherever located, for downloading, further copying, and personal and commercial use….” and “There may be license restrictions imposed by the original source, in which case, they will be reproduced below, and you may be bound by them. It is your responsibility to ascertain any restrictions on the use of the materials and any limitations on the use of them…”

The Beneficent Technology, Inc/ “Bookshare” contract(s) are signed by Elizabeth Beaumon.
Beneficent Technology Inc (Benetech)’s 2011 Tax Return brief description og the organizations mission or most significant activities states “Benetechs Mission is to create Innovative Technology Applications between what’s possible and what’s sufficiently profitable for socially beneficially objectives…” (www.benetech.org)

InsideView® says Beneficent Technology has a revenue of $7 million.

http://benetech.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/BTI_990_2011.pdf

Fruchterman spoke highly of his revolutionizing book distribution for disabled people at ½ price of what it cost government beaming as he told legislators giving Intellectual Property away for free is the Silicon Valley model. Money, Fruchterman testified is made through advertising. And Fruchterman told how he is pushing publishing to give him more books to put online- impression? For Free- after all, Bookshare is a non profit right? Ummm… will let you make that judgement yourself. Goal & role here is to make sure Creatives of 2D IP Intellectual Property, ID Identity and Commerce is not taken without license and compensation by individuals and entities who can afford to pay but choose not to claiming Safe Harbor, Fair Use and in this case, helping the disabled.

There is a reality in book contracts that has been Model for decades. Publishing contracts include discounts from authors royalties for books for the blind and others. Taking more money from authors sales in a world already challenged by technology when authors have already agreed to be charitable to those less fortunate is a mind scratcher moreso when Disability even Blindness today isnt what it was years ago. There is always a reality the author is disabled themselves. Or struggling to put food on the table or pay their mortgage, their college loans, tuition or… the list goes on. What if? Remember…. Any book they write has that clause to give books away at low to no cost or free, so where does Bookshare step into this Creative Entrepreneurs reality. Or why.

And then there was the and-and-and clause. Covering protests around the District nigh on a decade, this was the grooming done by professional activists. Their causes had seasons. Each season had a cause. Fruchterman’s grab for empathy was when he expanded the description of his publishing of books for Blind Persons to being inclusive of books for dyslexic and brain damaged.

Here is where some loose dots are going to be connected.

To make life easy-er, below are Sections 121 and 107, saving on research. And I will give the exact same advice given to Andrew Parker Bowles (yes that one) when we talked about Government distributions to persons running racehorse rehabilitation sites in the UK. The il-logic was to keep the activists from breathing down Horseracings necks by paying lip service to the Sports antagonists. Here- a horse lives 17 years, a woman with no horse experience screams bloody murder about knackers yards. She gets a Dame or two on her board she formed and overnight she is lifted from being a failed designer to living on an estate charity pays for. What advice did I give Andrew? You can never challenge a person’s honesty but you can always ask for the papers that paint the picture they put into the world. Demand receipts, not just from them but from the feed houses, the tack providers etc. And check the sequence of transactions weeks out and past the transaction of the person the inquiry is being made of. The truth is there. Just have to have spine. Most don’t.

“I am Jim Fruchterman, CEO and Founder of Benetech, one of Silicon Valley’s leading technology nonprofits. We operate just like a regular for profit software company, with software developers, product managers and user support professionals, but our focus is on addressing important social problems where the market today is failing. As someone who was involved in the founding of seven for profit high tech companies in Silicon Valley (and only five failed)…. The Benetech team comes out of the high tech industry.”

Fruchterman failed to tell Congress what he tells his interviewers, Bookshare, the model based on illegal file sharing is the only company he has started that met its goals.
.
“Many of our senior staff members have been entrepreneurs and founders of regular for
profit high tech companies. We build our work on strong foundations laid down by other people and companies, whether it’s the open source ecosystem of the Internet, or proprietary software or content. We don’t create solutions from scratch our innovation is adapting existing raw technology to meet the needs of the users in the social sector. We call this building the last social mile.We depend on an intellectual property system that works and is friendly to innovation. Concepts like fair use, open source and open content make our work much easier, since they reduce the transaction costs for less lucrative uses of intellectual property. And, we frequently depend on the good will of companies and rights holders to provide us with free or inexpensive access to the assets”

Less lucrative to a man who acknowledges being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars year in salary, is disengenious.

The word “be•nef•i•cent” [buh-nef-uh-suhnt] is of 1610-20 origin. It means doing good or causing good to be done, kindly in action or purpose.

Investopia (www.investopedia.com/terms/n/not-for-profit.asp) defines ‘Not For Profit’: A not for profit organization is a type of organization that does not earn profits for its owners. All of the money earned by or donated to a not for profit organization is used in pursuing the organization’s objectives. Typically not for profit organizations are charities or other types of public service organizations. Generally, not for profit organizations can apply for a tax exempt status so that the organization is not subject to most forms of taxation.” Income-producing but not-for-profit organizations are exempt from federal income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service Code (26 U.S.C.A. § 501) lists more than two dozen different categories. Compliance requires that funds acquired by nonprofit corporations must stay within the corporate accounts paying reasonable salaries, expenses, and the activities of the corporation. A corporation that is considered profit driven if the income of the corporation benefits an individual,. Salaries, necessary for the operation of a corporation may cause a corporation to lose its nonprofit status if it is excessive.

The Benetech Initiative listed its EIN number as EIN 77-0225904. Guidestar.org returned the result “NOT REGISTERED WITH IRS.” The company associated with the EIN number is Beneficent, Inc. dba, Benetech Technology Serving Humanity aka Benetech, Palo Alto, CA. EIN 77-0225904 was filing taxes in 2003.

The company associated with the EIN was not Beneficent Technology Inc or others of the expanding and morphing Fruchterman companies. The tax years listed for Beneficent Technology Inc are 2011-2009. Leadership? James R Fruchterman (www.guidestar.org/organizations/77-0555413/beneficent-technology.aspx)

Investopia also says “Donations made to a tax exempt not for profit organization may also be tax-deductible for the donor.” Would then a Copyright taken without permission then could be considered a donation that Benetech would have to disclose to the IRS- for each and every use of a Copyright….

The Legal Dictionary defines Non Profit, A corporation or an association that conducts business for the benefit of the general public without shareholders and without a profit motive.(http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/nonprofit)

Fruchterman presented as a man with a non profit mission to scan books into files, into Braille that can be read aloud, cites his non profit is not in violation of Copyright due to Sections 121 and 107 of Title 17, the Copyright Act. Section 121 adresses Limitations on Exclusive Rights: Reproduction for Blind or other people with Disabilities; Section 107 adresses Limitations on Exclusive Rights, Fair Use.

“Beneficent Technology (hereafter called “Bookshare”) represents that it is an IRC §501(c)(3) California charitable nonprofit organization that qualifies under 17 U.S.C. §121 of the U.S. copyright law.” IRS employee Lois Lerner rubber stamped Beneficent Technology Inc’s qualification as a Public Charity on March 22 2005. Lerner’s decision was made based upon papers that Fruchterman and Benetech contact person, James Brandes, submitted to the IRS for review. Fruchterman wrote “”Legal” because Benetech, as a qualified nonprofit organization, provided the legal framework to allow peer-to-peer sharing of scanned books (at least, under U.S. domestic copyright law).” (www.daisy.org/stories/jim-fruchterman-part-2 )

The March 22 2005 letter to “Applicant” Beneficent Technology Inc rubber stamped from Lois Lerner, of Exempt Organizations Rulings and Agreements, was very clear that an IRS letter dated April 2001 letter advising Benetech they would be treated as a Public Charity rather than a private foundation. But Lois didn’t give non profit status to Bookshare or Benetech. She gave Non Profit status to Beneficent Technology Inc based on representations Beneficent Technology Inc made in their Charitable status request filed in 2001. The Lois Lerner team responded in the affirmative four years after Beneficent Technology employee James Brandes sent in the request for Charitable status. The delay? Many other “private foundations” motivated to shift to Public Charity Status 170(b)(1)(A)(vi). Lermer’s staff referred Beneficent Technology Inc to Publication 557- Tax Exempt Status For Your Organization providing “detailed information about your rights and responsibilities as an exempt organization.”

No where is mentioned Benetech.

The agreement continues “Bookshare will immediately advise the undersigned publisher should it cease to be such. Copyrighted materials are made available to Bookshare’s members under a digital rights management plan intended to restrict the use of such materials only to qualified persons, and to discourage abuse of the copyright owner’s rights.

Under this copyright law exception, Bookshare does not need permission from copyright owners to make copyrighted materials available in the United States to persons with qualifying disabilities. Bookshare members and its volunteers provide books and documents to the Bookshare service, which Bookshare then makes available to its members. However, Bookshare needs permission and assistance from publishers and owners of copyrighted works to fully realize its mission of providing high-quality accessible content to persons with qualifying disabilities.

“Beneficent Technology, Inc. is the nonprofit developer and the operator of its Bookshare® service, an Internet-based book and document access service which operates under the provisions of 17 U.S.C. §121. This provision of the U.S. Copyright law permits Bookshare to acquire, process and distribute otherwise copyrighted works, when distributed in specialized formats, for use only by its members who have qualifying disabilities.”

But it was Benetech testifying. Plus, there is a hitch, under “Qualified Users”…

”Only blind or other persons with disabilities that affect their ability to access print are permitted to download copyrighted books… A Bookshare user must register and supply a signed certification completed by an appropriate professional in the field of disability services education, medicine, psychology or a related area. The certifier must be a recognized expert who can attest to the physical basis that limits the applicant’s use of standard print. Appropriate certifying experts may differ from disability to disability… any U.S. resident who has previously submitted a proof of disability to NLS (National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped of the Library of Congress) or Learning Ally (formerly RFB&D) would qualify under the law, we have cooperative agreements where NLS or Learning Ally will certify to us that he or she has such proof already.”

Either the certification is on file or it isnt. There is another hitch. No where does § § 121 . Limitations on exclusive rights Reproduction for blind or other people with disabilities use the word Payment to indicate Reproduction for Blind or Other People with disabilities” NOT require PAYMENT. (refer below)

Let there be no irony lost on the name of Fruchterman’s early company Arkenstone. It wasn’t a name Fruchterman made up. Fruchterman took that too, from Tolkein’s Lord of The Rings “” It was a globe with a thousand facets; It shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the Moon!” —Thorin describing The Arkenstone of Thrain. The Arkenstone was an heirloom of the Durin’s people that known as the “Heart of the Mountain” of Thrain. It was a gem was lost when Smaug the dragon captured the Dwarves Mountain. The dwarves had shaped the gem. Thorin Oakenshield searched for it in JR Tolkein’s “The Hobbit.”
Fruchterman told Daisy during their interview of him, “Remarkably, this is completely in line with US copyright laws. There’s a provision, known as the Chafee Amendment, which allows redistribution of copyrighted works for people with certain verifiable disabilities.”

Fruchterman told his interviewer “the project uses the weakest possible digital rights management technology, because Jim recognizes that users need to convert the content into various forms: large-type print, braille, MP3, and so on.”

Freedom Scientific bought Arkenstone. Businessweek says that Fruchterman was Freedom Scientific. Fruchterman openly states he was Arkentsone. Arkenstone’s $5 million financed Benetech projects. There are several including Bookshare.org which Fruchterman describes as “Amazon plus Napster plus talking books, but legal.” Fruchterman says the time to scan one book can take up to three hours. Fruchterman said it was logical to him that “a book scanned for one reader should be usable by another blind reader.” Fruchterman’s Bookshare.org doesn’t give the books to the blind for free. Fruchterman charges a blind reader $50 a year for all the downloads the Blind Reader can read. Fruchterman went on and told Daisy, in his interview “The $50 a year fee doesn’t yet cover the costs of the operation, but does cover about 25%, reducing the project’s dependence on charitable support” so the Blind “can upload books that they’ve scanned and share them with other readers, ala Napster.”

Fruchterman’s online editorial states, in black and white, he is hoping he will convince publishers to move away from Copyright, claiming that Fair Use is a lab for disability, boasting he has a great track record of making money for his stake holders, as well as himself….

Definition of “Stakeholder”: a person or group that has an investment, share, or interest in something, as a business or industry. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stakeholder?s=t) To men like Fruchterman, Copyright Owners are NOT stakeholders. If Copyright Owners were Stakeholders, Fruchterman would be signing license agreements, asking permission and paying fees or royalties, as each individual Copyright Owner sees fit in their business model to ask for. He doesn’t see fit.

The point not being seen is there is no one stopping these VC from creating their own content to use as they wish. In fact, they would be stimulating the economy by putting authors and illustrators to work. There are many of both who will Work For Hire, do the work, get paid and walk away from all rights. BUT that isnt a risk these spoiled brats from Silicon Valley are willing to do. It isnt their money being put up to start their companies. It isnt their content they are sucking off the Internet to fuel their ambitions.. No mystery why Jim Fruchterman, a man who acknowledges to the IRS a $287,000 a year (without accounting for what is being written off through the non-profit) is politicking Capitol Hill. Fruchterman wants more profit of the ONLY one of his companies to be profitable from using the Napster model of taking OPIP, Other People’s Intellectual Property, without letting them share in the profits he and his associates are making.

Bookshare addresses “Personal Information.” The sites defers to “copyright law exception that allows Bookshare to provide copyrighted material to people with print disabilities.” The law very clearly DOES NOT exempt Bookshare from obtaining Permission from Copyright Owners before providing books through Bookshare. The page says Personal Information is requested for reasons including “To share qualification data with other nonprofit organizations serving people with disabilities, to streamline the process of verifying eligibility for services” and “To investigate and support legal proceedings concerning alleged abuse of the copyright laws,” Fruchterman had posted.

Downloaded Transaction Information of the Blind is kept so “Bookshare will also maintain transaction logs of the materials downloaded by its users. We will use this information for the following purposes…To gather statistical data about usage patterns for the improvement of the Bookshare service.” (www.bookshare.org/about/privacy‎)

While Bookshare posts it wont “provide access to any third parties to the information contained in our transaction logs, except in connection with investigation of or for actual legal proceedings concerning potential abuse” that it does use Cookies and “ Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyze how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using this website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.” (www.bookshare.org/about/privacy‎)

Fruchterman wrote an Opinion Piece for the Huffington Post in which Fruchterman explained his views on Intellectual Property (www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-fruchterman/going-to-davos-to-redesig_b_428925.html?view=print) “My proposal is that the world’s knowledge should work for all of humanity. Some folks call newly developed knowledge “intellectual property,” but this obscures the fact that we don’t treat ideas and content the same way as we treat a house or land. We give inventors and authors a time-limited qualified monopoly on their creations to encourage them to bring them to other people through dissemination and commercialization, where appropriate. But, the whole point of the concept of intellectual property is that it’s supposed to benefit society, that there is a balancing act between society’s interest and self-interest.”
While Fruchterman’s ambitions are to be Global and as presented by Fruchterman “hunky dory”, not everyone is on board. It appears the Canadian Government has required Freedom Scientific to be purchased through Canadian re-sellers as indicated in an online string by Texas residents. (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/openbook-users/message/1466)

Compliance isnt top of the list for Fruchterman and Bookshare. Fruchterman is a member of the Internet Defense League (http://internetdefenseleague.org) Its members inclide mozilla, fightforthe future, wordpress, reddit, cheezburger, 4chan, hotspotshield, piwik, credo mobiles, php, freepress action fund, imgur, fark, demand progress, open mediaca, opentechnology institute, ccia, craigconnects, accessnow,org, and others. They post “We’ll keep in close touch with groups like the EFF and Public Knowledge to identify threats and opportunities. We’ve also got a subreddit. This will get formalized more soon, but for now we’re definitely targeting ACTA in June and CISPA as it re-emerges in the Senate.” The “voice” to WIPO speaking for America appears to be Bookshare, described as “the sponsor of the Bookshare Initiative” in the USA (www.visionip.org/vip_resources/en/best_practices/us.html)

The world 2D(dimensional) IP (intellectual property) and ID (creators identity) think differently. They think Fruchterman’s many profitable ventures need to rebalance to their favor paying Royalties and Penalties for Unauthorized Use of their IP which appears to being used to fund Fruchterman’s multiple initiatives for Social Causes Fruchterman deems to have value. Paying Creative Owners for their Arts to support themselves does not appear to be one of those causes dear to Fruchterman.

Pages 41-47 of the August 2012 taxes list Fruchterman’s ambition to unlock the world through his Human Activism initiatives- Martus, Miradi, Route 66, SocialHacking4Good, City Options, The Human Rights Program and Bookshare. Bookshare, Fruchterman tells people, is his only profitable initiative. Bookshare profits from Intellectual Property Fruchterman takes then sells to the Blind co-mingling under The Benetech® Initiative giving the appearance that without Venture Capital and 2D(dimensional) IP (Intellectual Property), ID (Identity) and Commerce, Fruchterman would not be taking center stage at Davos Switzerland, the World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org/global-agenda-councils/james-r-fruchterman), and many other stages throughout the world.

Bad dad. Fruchterman credits his 14 year son for inspiring a Model based on stealing, “driven a concept inspired by his 14 year old son to an accessible online library like no other” (the DAISY interview) “my 14-year old son introduced me to Napster.” There is nothing to be said about acknowledging publicly one’s business that is breaking the law is using disabled people as their bullet to dodge a law while hurting innocent talented people who just want to do their Arts…. And get paid. Just like Fruchterman’s other stakeholders…. The $25,000,000 one.

Now, go back and read Fruchterman’s testimony posted on line, and not just between the lines. Check please! Just make it out to all the 2D IP, Intellectual Property Creatives whose ARTS works and Identity are being stolen under defense of Fair Use and Safe Habor. Here you go… the just released SNAAP report will facilitate you Legislators, grasping the magnitude of people being hurt, when you look at the listing of Arts facilities across the country- multiply that times the number of college loans that wont be able to be paid down, houses that wont be able to be bought, mortgages paid, bar mitzvahs and confirmations paid for or mouths you, Congress will have to feed ALL because the consistent abuse of Safe Harbor and Fair Use by individuals with more money than they know how to be accountable to Copyright owners for….

EDITS FROM JIM FRUCHTERMANs TESTIMONY:
Fruchterman in his written testimony said, “Section 121 allows authorized nonprofit entities, such as Bookshare, whose primary mission is to serve people with disabilities, to create accessible versions of copyrighted books without the need to request permission from publishers and then distribute them exclusively to people with qualifying disabilities. Section 107, the fair use exception, has been important since the founding of Bookshare, and has continued relevance as we look to the future…” “We committed to not enlarging the franchise of who qualified for Bookshare, by using the same criteria used by Learning Ally (then Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic) to ensure that we provided accessible books only to people with bona fide disabilities that truly interfered with reading.

We next brought the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America on board by committing to be against illegal copying of books and to authors ability to review the quality of their works on Bookshare.

By smoothing the way with publishers and authors, we had the space to launch a
completely new approach to solving an important social issue: ensuring that people with disabilities have access to the books they need for education, employment and full inclusion in society ay, we serve more than a quarter million American student members through funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. 4 students get this access to educational material for free, thanks to this funding And, it’s far, far cheaper to scan a given book once, proofread it, and then have it be accessible to all Americans with qualifying disabilities.

This is in stark contrast to the status quo before Bookshare, where only a tiny
fraction of the needed books were available in accessible form, and often the same book was painstakingly recreated over and over again by different educators at different schools, by parents and by students themselv Schools are legally required under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to provide these students with accessible educational materials.

These students are almost always receiving special education services of some kind. While tens of thousands of our members are blind or visually impaired, the majority of our members are dyslexic.

We also serve people who are unable to interact effectively with printed books because of a physical disability, such as cerebral palsy, a spinal cord injury or traumatic brain injury.

Returning veterans with disabilities that diminish their capacity to read print is a key population that we are actively working to support. We want to make sure they still have the opportunity to pursue higher educational opportunities.
Over half of the books in our collection have been provided directly to Bookshare by publishers voluntarily in high quality digital formats. It’s an outstanding act of corporate social 5 Copyright and BookshareThe Section 121 exception has been crucial for us.

It made Bookshare possible and continues to guide our work. It was written broadly enough that we could innovate and help solve the social problem we set out to solve. That flexibility allowed for creativity, which wouldn’t have been there if the legislation had specified the fourtrack audio tape technology that was in use at the time of Chafee Amendment in 1996 (and is only now being phased out). We also extensively leverage fair use, Section 107.

It allowed for the creation of the scanned copies that were originally used to create Bookshare. We had a member who is blind who contributed 3,000 scanned books to us at the start. It wasn’t legal for him to distribute those books to other people who are blind, but he was able to have his own library created by his personal efforts and those of his family, and that is a textbook

To make this possible, we must keep the balance in copyright. We need to defend fair use as a laboratory for creativity. And we can’t use moral panics and wild claims of economic damages to constrain innovation in advance. We have a good track record of figuring out how to make money for stakeholders while helping consumers and society, and we can continue this trend. With the leverage of technology, and the foundation provided by well thought out intellectual property laws and a lot of common sense we can inspire economic growth AND social

TITLE XVII 106, 106A, 107, 121

§ 121 . Limitations on exclusive rights:

Reproduction for blind or other people with disabilities

(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of Section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute copies or phonorecords of a previously published, nondramatic literary work if such copies or phonorecords are reproduced or distributed in specialized formats exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.
(b)(1) Copies or phonorecords to which this section applies shall--

(A) not be reproduced or distributed in a format other than a specialized format exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities;

(B) bear a notice that any further reproduction or distribution in a format other than a specialized format is an infringement; and

(C) include a copyright notice identifying the copyright owner and the date of the original publication.

(2) The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to standardized, secure, or norm-referenced tests and related testing material, or to computer programs, except the portions thereof that are in conventional human language (including descriptions of pictorial works) and displayed to users in the ordinary course of using the computer programs.

(c) Notwithstanding the provisions of Section 106, it is not an infringement of copyright for a publisher of print instructional materials for use in elementary or secondary schools to create and distribute to the National Instructional Materials Access Center copies of the electronic files described in sections 612(a)(23)(C), 613(a)(6), and section 674(e) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that contain the contents of print instructional materials using the National Instructional Material Accessibility Standard (as defined in section 674(e)(3) of that Act), if--

1] the inclusion of the contents of such print instructional materials is required by any State educational agency or local educational agency;

2] the publisher had the right to publish such print instructional materials in print formats; and

3] such copies are used solely for reproduction or distribution of the contents of such print instructional materials in specialized formats. (d) For purposes of this section, the term--

(1) “authorized entity” means 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;

(2) “blind or other persons with disabilities” means individuals who are eligible or who may qualify in accordance with the Act entitled “An Act to provide books for the adult blind”, approved March 3, 1931 (2 U.S.C. 135a; 46 Stat. 1487) to receive books and other publications produced in specialized formats;

3] “print instructional materials” has the meaning given under section 674(e)(3)(C) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; and

4] “specialized formats” means--

(A) braille, audio, or digital text which is exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities; and

(B) with respect to print instructional materials, includes large print formats when such materials are distributed exclusively for use by blind or other persons with disabilities.

§ 107 . Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use

Notwithstanding the provisions of Sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include--
1] the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

2] the nature of the copyrighted work;

3] the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

4] the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

§ 106 . Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

Subject to Sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

1] to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

2] to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;

3] to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;

4] in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;

5] in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and

6] in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

§ 106A . Rights of certain authors to attribution and integrity

(a) Rights of Attribution and Integrity.—Subject to Section 107 and independent of the exclusive rights provided in Section 106, the author of a work of visual art--

1] shall have the right--

A] to claim authorship of that work, and
B] to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of any work of visual art which he or she did not create;

2] shall have the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation; and

3] subject to the limitations set forth in Section 113(d), shall have the right--

(A) to prevent any intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation, and any intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of that work is a violation of that right, and

(B) to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work is a violation of that right.

(b) Scope and Exercise of Rights.—Only the author of a work of visual art has the rights conferred by subsection (a) in that work, whether or not the author is the copyright owner. The authors of a joint work of visual art are co-owners of the rights conferred by subsection (a) in that work.

(c) Exceptions.—(1) The modification of a work of visual art which is the result of the passage of time or the inherent nature of the materials is not a distortion, mutilation, or other modification described in subsection (a)(3)(A).

2] The modification of a work of visual art which is the result of conservation, or of the public presentation, including lighting and placement, of the work is not a destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification described in subsection (a)(3) unless the modification is caused by gross negligence.

3] The rights described in paragraphs (1) and (2) of subsection

(a) shall not apply to any reproduction, depiction, portrayal, or other use of a work in, upon, or in any connection with any item described in subparagraph (A) or (B) of the definition of “work of visual art” in Section 101, and any such reproduction, depiction, portrayal, or other use of a work is not a destruction, distortion, mutilation, or other modification described in paragraph

(3) of subsection (a).

(d) Duration of Rights.—(1) With respect to works of visual art created on or after the effective date set forth in section 610(a) of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, the rights conferred by subsection (a) shall endure for a term consisting of the life of the author.

2] With respect to works of visual art created before the effective date set forth in section 610(a) of the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, but title to which has not, as of such effective date, been transferred from the author, the rights conferred by subsection (a) shall be coextensive with, and shall expire at the same time as, the rights conferred by Section 106.

3] In the case of a joint work prepared by two or more authors, the rights conferred by subsection (a) shall endure for a term consisting of the life of the last surviving author.

4] All terms of the rights conferred by subsection (a) run to the end of the calendar year in which they would otherwise expire.

(e) Transfer and Waiver.--

1] The rights conferred by subsection (a) may not be transferred, but those rights may be waived if the author expressly agrees to such waiver in a written instrument signed by the author. Such instrument shall specifically identify the work, and uses of that work, to which the waiver applies, and the waiver shall apply only to the work and uses so identified. In the case of a joint work prepared by two or more authors, a waiver of rights under this paragraph made by one such author waives such rights for all such authors.

2] Ownership of the rights conferred by subsection (a) with respect to a work of visual art is distinct from ownership of any copy of that work, or of a copyright or any exclusive right under a copyright in that work. Transfer of ownership of any copy of a work of visual art, or of a copyright or any exclusive right under a copyright, shall not constitute a waiver of the rights conferred by subsection (a). Except as may otherwise be agreed by the author in a written instrument signed by the author, a waiver of the rights conferred by subsection (a) with respect to a work of visual art shall not constitute a transfer of ownership of any copy of that work, or of ownership of a copyright or of any exclusive right under a copyright in that work.

FIGHT THEFT OF COPYRIGHTS
<>
SUPPORT

A ROCKSTAR
AGAINST
IP & ID ABUSE BY
TECHNOLOGY

_________________
WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN
____________________

___________________
Capitol Hill Switchboard
(202) 224 3121 _____________________

WRITE YOUR
SENATOR
___________________

__________________
KNOW YOUR CONGRESSMAN OR
SENATOR
?
SEARCH BY ZIPCODE
__________________

Create
The 2D ARTS IP
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
PROTECTION
ACT
FOR
TREASURED
HEIRLOOM
ARTS
LEGACY
INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY
PROTECTION
SIGN THE PETITION

______________

__________________
TELL HERE HOW COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT HURT YOU ______________

___________________
TELL
TECHNOLOGY
KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF
MY COPYRIGHT
______________

HONORING THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR ALL
SO WE MIGHT HAVE OUR
PROPERTY RIGHTS
THANK YOU

______________________________________________________________________________________________
ALL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY STARTS with a Pencil &Paper in 2D(dimension) 
Everything Else about IP(intellectual property) comes down to COMMERCE .
_______________________________________________________________________________________________