Blog

Legislative staffers appreciate hearing from Benetech in our role as a Silicon Valley technology-for-good pioneer. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to join Benetech CEO Jim Fruchterman and VP of Human Rights Enrique Piracés in Washington, DC, for a series of meetings with Congressional staffers to present Benetech’s Human Rights Program and its role supporting the global human rights community. We also briefed members of the press who were interested to learn about our human rights work.

10X: ten times the impact. That’s what’s been on my mind lately. How can our existing successful programs reach ten times more people? How can we use technology in a new way to improve people’s lives that is an order of magnitude better? Can we help stimulate the creation of far more technology-for-good ventures? At Benetech, we want to help lead the charge into a future where the advantages of digital information touch the lives of all people, not just of the richest and most able five percent of humanity. As always, I’m delighted to share the latest Benetech highlights as we work on these ambitious 10X dreams!

At Benetech’s Human Rights Program, we are focused on helping activists and journalists uphold their commitments to protect and do no harm to the communities with which they work. We are therefore excited to announce the release of version 4.5 of Martus—our free, open source, secure information collection and management software—which includes major updates and usability improvements. Martus 4.5 takes a big step forward towards extending the reach and benefit of open source, strong crypto to the growing communities interested in secure data collection.

Two days ago, on Tuesday, June 10, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York made a major ruling that emphasizes the legality of fair use for book digitization. In Authors Guild v. 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 (Section 107 of the U.S. copyright law). This is an immense victory for fair use as the basis of a balanced intellectual property system, and we, at Benetech, are delighted by it and by its tremendous positive implications for the public interest.

At Benetech, we believe that as accessible digital content and applications increasingly become more available, they must also be easily discoverable. That’s exactly what we set out to do through the Accessibility Metadata Project, one of our Benetech Labs projects. We have recently completed the project and I’m delighted to say that we accomplished all these goals and more!