Siva Vaidhyanathan

Siva Vaidhyanathan (born 1966 in Buffalo, New York ) is a cultural historian and media scholar. He is Professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia.

Vaidhyanathan is regularly engaged in journalism. He published it in The Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, MSNBC.com, and Salon.com. Between 2004 and 2008 he operated the blog Sivacracy.net, now he blogs under www.googlizationofeverything.com/.

Vaidhyanathan earned his B. A. 1995 and his doctorate in 1999 at the University of Texas. Between 1999 and 2007 he taught at New York University.

Vaidhyanathan was with Lawrence Lessig about the turn of the century one of the first thinkers who brought the question of intellectual property rights, personal freedom and cultural expression in the scientific public debate. In his remarks to the cyber liberties he takes the political theory of anarchism as a starting point to develop his system of a radical democracy. This is based on personal autonomy and innovation, and need a culture of sharing - of music, poetry, data and rumors - to be able to develop.

In Copyrights and Copy Wrongs Vaidhyanathan argues that the history of copyright is the story of a continuous expansion in the 20th century, which has lost the original goals of copyright out of sight.

The Anarchist in the Library he diagnosed a conflict between oligarchy and anarchy which threatens the Deliberative discourse in the public sphere. File sharing is in this context a recent prominence of cultural practices, view the ruling institutions for centuries as subversive.

Publications

• Copyrights and Copy Wrongs: . The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity, NYU Press, 2001 (ISBN 978-0-8147-8807-3 )
• The Anarchist in the Library: . How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, Basic Books, 2004 (ISBN 978-0-465-08985-7 )
• Rewiring the Nation: ., The Place of Technology in American Studies, co-edited with Carolyn de la Peña, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007 (ISBN 978-0-8018-8651-5 )
• The Googlization of Everything - and Why We Should Worry, University of California Press, 2011 (ISBN 978-0-520-25882-2 ). . The text resulting in open development on a blog, Launched September 27, 2007 in collaboration with the Institute for the Future of the Book.