Yochai Benkler Joins Board

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:14:37 +0000

Scholar and Internet Guru Yochai Benkler Joins FreedomBox Board

FreedomBox Foundation is pleased to announce the latest addition to its Board of Directors, Harvard University law professor Yochai Benkler. The notable scholar and social scientist is the author of the influential works Coase's Penguin and The Wealth of Networks, as well as his newest book, The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest.

"We're excited to have Yochai on board. He will provide insight into the most important challenge of the FreedomBox, that is, understanding how this technology can fit seamlessly into the daily lives of people," said Eben Moglen, president of the foundation.

FreedomBox Foundation is a non-profit project with the mission of developing a network device and open source software that protects privacy, anonymity and security on the Internet, a cause to which Benkler is personally and professionally dedicated. "The FreedomBox will change the way people talk to each other on the Internet," he said. "We are giving people control over their digital lives by protecting these basic human rights." The long-range goal of the project is to make "Freedom Boxes" available to the average consumer.

Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Since the 1990s, he has enlightened the world about innovation and collaboration in the digital commons as well as information production and freedom in the networked economy and society.

Benkler's forward-thinking books and other socially-engaged works have earned him many awards, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award, the Public Knowledge's IP3 Award and the Donald McGannon Award for Social and Ethical Relevance in Communications Policy Research. The Financial Times has cited his work as "perhaps the best work yet about the fast moving, enthusiast-driven Internet."

Benkler joins a growing board of well-respected free and open source software veterans, which boasts the help of former Debian Project Leader Bdale Garbee in addition to Moglen, founding director of the Software Freedom Law Center. Board members, all volunteers, play an active role in technical development, administration and fundraising. Benkler has advised a range of national and international communications and intellectual property regulators and policy makers, and his work can be freely accessed at benkler.org.

FreedomBox Foundation was started by Moglen and staff from the Software Freedom Law Center as an organizational home for the various community development efforts that are already building freedom box systems. "Freedom boxes, smart devices whose engineered purpose is to work together to facilitate free communication among people safely and securely beyond the ambition of the strongest power to penetrate, can make freedom of thought and information a permanent, ineradicable feature of the net that holds our souls," said Moglen.

Press Details

Source: FreedomBox Foundation

For immediate release
July 5, 2011
Contact: James Vasile, 212-461-1906, vasile@freedomboxfoundation.org