Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

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Russia rights groups get help from Microsoft

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Patrick Ball and I have often discussed the risks to social justice groups from using unlicensed proprietary software. A government could suppress a group using "piracy" as a reason, rather than criticism of the government. We've seen this happen in places like Russia.

Russia 133
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The First Global Martus Users Group Meeting

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Guest Beneblog by Vijaya Tripathi The first ever Martus users group meeting took place earlier this month in Chiang Mai, the capital of Northern Thailand. Martus is Benetech's free and open source software package designed for human rights activists to collect stories and data about human rights abuses.

Global 157
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Exciting Social Enterprise Group I met at the Skoll World Forum

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Raja is a seasoned business executive with senior level experience in multinationals (Coca-Cola, B&W/BAT, BOC Group, Societe Generale) in Europe, Asia and in multiple Middle East/North African countries (MENA), as an entrepreneur and as Managing Director of one of the oldest retail groups in the MENA region.

SWF 140
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Hachette Book Group Partners with Bookshare

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

It's very exciting that we can announce that one of the largest book groups in the United States has just made the commitment: Hachette Book Group Partners with Bookshare To Make Thousands of Books Available to People with Print Disabilities.

Group 100
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Fighting Accessibity Weaseling by Amazon et al, Victory!

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

So, last year, Benetech joined with the National Federation of the Blind and over twenty other groups that care about consumers with disabilities to object to an attempt by Amazon and their competitors to secure a permanent exemption from accessibility requirement for many of the ebook readers.

Amazon 199
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Benetech's Human Rights Spin-off

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

Our goal is to empower human rights and social justice groups to leverage their information assets for maximum impact: For current and near-term advocacy and for larger scale truth telling when the time is right. Interestingly enough, our 2013 budget projection for the Martus project is larger than the combined group was in 2012.

Analysis 174
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Breakthrough Philanthropy - Thiel Foundation event

Beneblog: Technology Meets Society

The foundation spotlighted eight unusual nonprofit groups. I knew of a fair number of the groups already. Three of the groups were loosely affiliated with Ray Kurzweil and his ideas around human uploading and the Singularity. And the last group is well known to tech people, the X PRIZE Foundation.