Benetech

At their best, IP laws encourage technological advances, reward creativity, and benefit society. Practical and creative innovators need space to operate and ensure those benefits reach the people who desperately need new solutions but are often least able to afford them. To make this possible, we must ensure balance in copyright laws and defend fair use as a laboratory for creativity. With the leverage of technology and the foundation provided by well thought out IP laws, we can inspire both economic growth and social good.

Inside Silicon Valley, a weekly public affairs program on radio station 1590 KLIV in San Jose, CA, featured our CEO, Jim Fruchterman, in a conversation about his journey as a social entrepreneur and Benetech.

Are you focused on planning for success? Good. But are you also planning for failure? You should, because it’s how we fail that sets us up for success, argues David Pablo Cohn. We recently had the pleasure of hosting Pablo at Benetech’s offices, where he shared with us some rules of thumb he’d picked up along the way for failing as well as possible. This was an opportune lesson for the Benetech team, as we recently launched Benetech Labs. In the spirit of new beginnings and New Year’s resolutions, we’d like to share here Pablo’s four rules for (good) failure as a way of life.

Human rights groups face increasingly sophisticated attackers with the ability to exploit their growing digital surface. When a group documenting human rights abuses against the Tibetan community came to us last year with interest in Martus, they brought with them a deep mistrust of their own hard drives. Together we decided to use an implementation method that emphasized security at all stages and selected Tails to be the default environment for their use of Martus. The Martus-on-Tails model is an exciting new venture into human rights defenders’ protection. We look forward to exploring other models and developing this one into a more mature standard.

Today, December 10th, we’re delighted to join the Silicon Valley United Nations Association in observance of Human Rights Day, which marks this year the 65th anniversary of the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Tonight, at 6pm, at the Calabazas Branch Library, I’ll be giving a talk for the Silicon Valley United Nations Association about some of the ways in which we at Benetech are working on human rights issues globally and in support of the United Nations. I cannot imagine a more fitting group or day to speak about this subject!