- Allan Adler
- VP, Legal & Governmental Affairs
Association of American Publishers
Allan Adler is Vice President for Legal and Governmental Affairs in the Washington, D.C. office of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the national trade organization that represents our nation's book and journal publishing industries. From 1989 until joining AAP in 1996, Adler practiced law as a member of Cohn and Marks, the Washington, D.C. communications law firm. His practice focused primarily on government relations in areas of federal law, regulation and policy concerning information, telecommunications and technology.
Prior to joining Cohn and Marks, Adler served as Legislative Counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union (1981-1989), where he presented testimony before various committees of Congress on a broad range of issues concerning the public's right to obtain and disseminate information. He also represented the ACLU in a variety of public policy matters relating to national security, privacy and the due process rights of employees in the workplace.
Adler holds a B.A. in History from the State University of New York at Binghamton (1974) and a Juris Doctor from the National Law Center of The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. (1978). He has been a member of the State Department's Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy ("ACICIP") since his appointment to it in 1997.
See the speaker's website: http://www.publishers.org/
- Michael W. Carroll
- Professor of Law
Villanova University School of Law
Professor Carroll received his A.B. with general honors from the University of Chicago and his J.D. magna cum laude from the Georgetown University Law Center. While in law school, Carroll was the Editor-in-Chief of the American Criminal Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. Following law school, he worked as an associate attorney at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C. and then clerked for U.S. District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green. He later clerked for D.C. Circuit Judge Judith W. Rogers, then returned to Wilmer, where he practiced in the areas of intellectual property and e-commerce. Carroll has also has co-taught a copyright class at Georgetown University Law Center. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Creative Commons, Inc.
See the speaker's website: www.creativecommons.org
- Paul Fakler
- Partner
Moses & Singer LLP
Mr. Fakler's practice focuses on litigation and counseling, primarily in the fields of copyright, trademark, entertainment and computer/Internet law. He has represented clients with respect to numerous high-profile intellectual property cases.
Mr. Fakler has also handled many intellectual property-intensive transactions, from motion picture distribution agreements to the intellectual property components of multimillion dollar mergers and acquisitions. He routinely provides audits of clients' intellectual property rights and develops strategies for the development and protection of clients' intellectual property assets and portfolios. Mr. Fakler counsels clients with respect to copyright, trademark, right of publicity, entertainment, computer and Internet law issues in diverse industries, including the music publishing, music recording, motion picture, publishing, software development and Internet industries.
Mr. Fakler was elected to the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association Intellectual Property Law Section, where he currently serves as Treasurer. He frequently lectures on issues related to copyright, entertainment and Internet law, and has appeared on television and in the press, commenting on cutting-edge intellectual property issues.
Prior to attending law school, Mr. Fakler worked in the multimedia software development field and taught English composition and film studies at the University of Florida. Mr. Fakler's undergraduate training was in philosophy, with an emphasis on continental and post-structuralist philosophy. He pursued graduate studies in literature and film studies, focusing his research on the impact of electronic forms of communication on human cognition. He is a recovering musician and an inveterate film fanatic.
- Paul Holdengräber
- Director, Public Programs
The New York Public Library
Paul Holdengräber is the Director of "LIVE from the NYPL," the Public Programs series at The New York Public Library. Since arriving in 2004, he has reinvented the series, adding conversations, debates and surprise performances to the traditional roster of readings and lectures. He has curated over 150 programs on an array of subjects, from the "Battle Over Books" with Google’s library print project, to a discussion on "Lust" with Esther Perel and Laura Kipnis. In the Fall of 2005, LIVE premiered an opera by Maira Kalman and Nico Muhly based on the illustrated version of the classic grammar book, The Elements of Style.
Recent LIVE participants have included Margaret Atwood, Tina Brown, Dominique de Villepin, Jonathan Demme, Steve Earle, Miranda July, David Byrne, Rebecca Mead, Richard Rodriguez, Pascal Bruckner, Isabelle Allende, Harold Bloom, Slavoj Zizek, Rosalynn Carter, President Bill Clinton, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Salman Rushdie, Geoffrey Stone, Günter Grass, Norman Mailer and Miss Manners.
Before coming to the Library, Holdengräber was founder and director of the Institute for Art and Cultures at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Holdengräber holds a Bachelor's Degree from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University. Fluent in four languages, Holdengräber has written essays and articles for journals in France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. In 2003, the French government awarded him the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
- Jonathan Lethem
- Bestselling Author | Novelist | Essayist
Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven novels, a novella, two short story collections and a volume of essays that explore, in various ways, the relationship between so-called high art and popular culture. Characterized by narrative leaps between vastly divergent genres, his fiction weaves the convention of noir mysteries, westerns, science fiction and comic books into coming-of-age tales that are otherwise evocative and realistic in content
Lethem is also an inventive and inexhaustible writer of short stories and essays, which have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New York Times, The Paris Review, McSweeney's and a variety of other periodicals and anthologies.
Jonathan Lethem studied at Bennington College (1982-1984) and immersed himself in the culture of literature by working as a bookseller at numerous bookshops in New York City and Berkley, California. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine where he is at work on new writing projects.
See the speaker's website: www.jonathanlethem.com
- Matt Mason
- Author
The Pirate's Dilemma
Matt Mason began his career as a pirate radio and club DJ in London, going on to become founding Editor-in-Chief of the seminal magazine RWD. In 2004, he was selected as one of the faces of Gordon Brown's Start Talking Ideas campaign, and was presented the Prince's Trust London Business of the Year Award by HRH Prince Charles.
He has written and produced TV series, comic strips, viral videos and records, and his journalism has appeared in The Observer, Music Monthly, VICE, Complex and other publications in more than a dozen countries around the world. He recently founded the nonprofit media company Wedia with his wife, Emily. He lives in New York City.
See the speaker's website: http://thepiratesdilemma.com/
- Kevin O'Kane
- President & Founder
Red Lasso
Kevin O'Kane has over twenty years of experience in the television broadcast industry. From 1993 to 2004 he was with Viacom/CBS, where he was instrumental in several start-up TV stations as the Paramount Stations Group expanded from four to twenty stations in just four years. In his most recent post as Viacom's VP General Manager in Philadelphia (the fourth largest television market in the country), O'Kane secured local broadcast rights to MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL sports franchises. O'Kane currently sits on the Board of the Philadelphia Police Athletic League, and is a former board member of NATAS (National Association of Television Arts and Sciences), The Philadelphia Ad Club, TVB Sales Advisory Committee, UPN Affiliate Advisory Board, FOX Affiliate Sales Advisory Board. He also has hands-on operating experience with ABC, FOX and CBS stations. O'Kane is a 1983 graduate of St. Francis University with a B.S. in Management.
See the speaker's website: www.redlasso.com
- Stanley Pierre-Louis
- VP and Associate General Counsel,
Intellectual Property & Content Protection
Viacom Inc.
Stanley Pierre-Louis is Vice President and Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property and Content Protection at Viacom Inc. He is responsible for managing major intellectual property litigation, developing strategies for protecting digital content, and leading other IP-related legal initiatives for Viacom and its brands, which include MTV Networks (MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Comedy Central, Country Music Television, Spike TV, TV Land, Logo and more than 130 networks around the world), BET Networks, Paramount Pictures, Paramount Home Entertainment and DreamWorks.
Prior to joining Viacom, Mr. Pierre-Louis served as Co-Chair of the Entertainment and Media Law Group at Kaye Scholer LLP (New York, NY), concentrating on intellectual property counseling and litigation. Mr. Pierre-Louis previously served as Senior Vice President for Legal Affairs at the Recording Industry Association of America (Washington, DC), where he led several important strategic copyright litigations, including the entertainment industry's litigations against MP3.com, Napster and Aimster as well as the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case MGM Studios v. Grokster, which resulted in a unanimous decision in favor of the film and music industries. Before joining the RIAA, Mr. Pierre-Louis clerked for Judge David A. Nelson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and was an associate at Shea & Gardener (Washington, DC).
Mr. Pierre-Louis is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Clark University and earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he served on the Board of Editors of the University of Chicago Law Review.
- Douglas Rushkoff
- Author | Teacher | Documentarian
A globally-recognized media theorist and thought leader on marketing and internet culture, Rushkoff explores how communications affect our values and our lives ? from how to raise children in a media-driven culture to how to find and impart meaning in business, education and even religion.
The originator of terms and ideas from "viral media" to "screenagers" and "social currency," Rushkoff is the author of 10 books on technology, media and popular culture, including Coercion, Media Virus, Playing the Future and Cyberia, the very first book on cyberculture. His books and novels have been translated into over 25 languages.
His latest book, Get Back in the Box: Innovation From the Inside Out, is a thought-provoking examination of the influence of interactive communications technology on business. Rushkoff looks at how the new renaissance in creativity and collaboration, ushered in by the Internet, gives organizations the freedom to return to core competencies and reconnect with the passion that fuels true innovation.
See the speaker's website: www.rushkoff.com
- Clay Shirky
- Author
Here Comes Everybody
Clay Shirky divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. Current clients include Nokia, GBN, the Library of Congress, the Highlands Forum, the Markle Foundation and the BBC. In addition to his consulting work, Shirky is an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches courses on how our networks shape culture and vice-versa.
Since 1996, Shirky has written and spoken extensively about the Internet. His writings have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review and Wired and he speaks on emerging technologies at a variety of forums and organizations. Shirky was the original Professor of New Media in the Media Studies department at Hunter College, where he created the department's first undergraduate and graduate offerings in new media, and helped design the current MFA in Integrated Media Arts program. He also appeared as an expert witness on Internet culture in Shea vs. Reno, a case cited in the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Communications Decency Act in 1996.
His new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations (Penguin, 2008) is about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures.
See the speaker's website: http://www.shirky.com
- Gigi B. Sohn
- President & Co-Founder
Public Knowledge
Gigi B. Sohn is President and Co-Founder of Public Knowledge, a nonprofit organization that addresses the public's stake in the convergence of communications policy and intellectual property law.
Gigi serves as PK?s chief strategist, fundraiser and public face. She is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, as well as in trade and local press. Gigi has been published in the Washington Post, Variety, CNET and Legal Times. In addition, she has appeared on numerous television and radio programs, including the Today Show, Good Morning America, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, C-SPAN?s Washington Journal and National Public Radio?s All Things Considered and Morning Edition.
Gigi is a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Southern California Annenberg Center and a Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne Faculty of Law, Graduate Studies Program in Australia. She has been an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University and at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University.
Gigi served as a Project Specialist in the Ford Foundation?s Media, Arts and Culture unit and as Executive Director of the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm that represents citizens? rights before the FCC and the courts. In 1997, President Clinton appointed Gigi to serve as a member of his Advisory Committee on the Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters. The Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Gigi its Internet "Pioneer" Award in 2006.
Gigi currently serves on the board of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) and Broadcasters? Child Development Center (BCDC). She is a member of the advisory board of the Future of Music Coalition. Gigi served on the District of Columbia Bar Board of Governors from 1997-2000.
Gigi holds a B.S. in Broadcasting and Film, Summa Cum Laude, from the Boston University College of Communication and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
- Chris Sprigman
- Associate Professor
University of Virginia School of Law
Chris Sprigman is an Associate Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, where he teaches intellectual property law, antitrust law, competition policy and comparative constitutional law. His scholarship focuses on how legal rules affect innovation and the deployment of new technologies.
Sprigman received his B.A. with honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. He attended the University of Chicago Law School, graduating with honors in 1993. At Chicago he served as an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. Following graduation, Sprigman clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and for Justice Lourens H. W. Ackermann of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He also taught at the law school of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. From 1999 to 2001, Sprigman served as Appellate Counsel in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on U.S. v. Microsoft, among other matters. He then joined the Washington, D.C. office of King & Spalding LLP, where he was elected a partner. In 2003, Sprigman left law practice to become a Residential Fellow at the Center for Internet & Society at Stanford Law School. He joined the UVA law faculty in 2005.
- Mark Tribe
- Assistant Professor of Modern Culture & Media Studies
Brown University
Mark Tribe is an artist and curator whose interests include art, technology and politics. He is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media Studies at Brown University, where he teaches courses on digital art, curating, open-source culture, radical media and surveillance. He is the co-author, with Reena Jana, of New Media Art (Taschen, 2006). His art work has been exhibited at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and Gigantic Art Space in New York City. He has organized curatorial projects for the New Museum of Contemporary Art, MASS MoCA, and inSite_05. In 1996, he founded Rhizome.org, an online resource for new media artists. Tribe now chairs the Rhizome.org board of directors. He received a MFA in Visual Art from the University of California, San Diego in 1994 and a BA in Visual Art from Brown University in 1990. He splits his time between Providence and New York City.
See the speaker's website: http://nothing.org/
- Suzanne Vega
- Singer-songwriter
Suzanne Vega ushered in a female, acoustic, folk-pop singer-songwriter movement that would include the likes of Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin and Indigo Girls, as well as the Lilith Fair phenomenon. Her 1985 self-titled debut was a hit in the UK and critically acclaimed in the US, but it was 1987's Solitude Standing that elevated Vega to star status. The album went platinum and the single "Luka" was a surprising hit.
Vega has released four other albums, a retrospective CD and a book of poetry, and hosted the public radio series "American Mavericks." In 2007 Suzanne signed to Blue Note Records and released the critically acclaimed Beauty and Crime, a love letter to her native New York City.
See the speaker's website: www.suzannevega.com
"The Ballad of Henry Timrod" by Suzanne Vega
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/opinion/17vega.html
- Tim Wu
- Professor
Columbia Law School
Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School. He is the co-author of Who Controls the Internet? (Oxford U. Press 2006) and a writer for Slate. In 2006 Wu was recognized as one 50 leaders in science and technology by Scientific American, and in 2007 listed as one of Harvard's 100 most influential graduates by 02138 magazine.
Tim Wu's best-known work is in the development of Net Neutrality Theory, but he has also written about copyright, international trade and the study of law-breaking. He previously worked for Riverstone Networks in the telecommunications industry in Silicon Valley, and was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from McGill University (B.Sc), and Harvard Law School, and has taught at the University of Virginia, the University of Chicago and Stanford Law School.
Wu has written for various legal publications as well as the Washington Post, Forbes, Playboy and others. He is on the advisory board of Free Press and Public Knowledge, is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and once worked at Hoo's Dumplings.
See the speaker's website: www.timwu.org