Siva Vaidhyanathan
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Siva Vaidhyanathan (born June 16, 1966) is a cultural historian and media scholar, and is currently an associate professor of culture and communication at New York University. Vaidhyanathan is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (2001) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (2004). He is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including the Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, Nation, and Salon.com, and he maintains a blog, Sivacracy.net. He is a frequent contributor to National Public Radio and to Eric Alterman's blog Altercation on MSNBC.COM. He has even appeared in a segment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Vaidhyanathan is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.
In March 2002, Library Journal cited Vaidhyanathan among its “Movers & Shakers” in the library field. In the feature story, Vaidhyanathan lauded librarians for being “on the front lines of copyright battles” and for being “the custodians of our information and cultural commons.” In November 2004 the Chronicle of Higher Education called Vaidhyanathan “one of academe’s best-known scholars of intellectual property and its role in contemporary culture.” He has testified as an expert before the U.S. Copyright Office on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Vaidhyanathan was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning both a BA in History and a Ph.D. in American Studies.
