Technology for Human Rights

Jim Fruchterman, President and CEO of Benetech.org, spoke to a Berkman audience today about the challenges of building software to benefit the public sector. He explained that, much like market pressures driving development of pharmaceutical drugs, profit motives for software companies rarely push business to make tools that benefit the disabled, human rights groups, and other public-sector organizations. Fruchterman's company obtains permissions from IP companies and develops technologies that can be sold at lower costs to the visually impaired (www.bookshare.org) and to human rights groups (Martus). But is the method of seeking exceptions to existing IP laws enough to support fundamental change of the current copyright regime? Fruchterman offered his business and technology perspective: driving a wedge in the existing IP regime at least supports the move to small, incremental change.