>> Copyright >> 2001 Town Meeting COPYRIGHT TOWN MEETING: Speaker Bios Howard Besser Howard Besser is an Associate Professor at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies where he teaches courses and does research on multimedia, image databases, digital libraries, metadata standards, intellectual property, digital longevity, information literacy, and the social and cultural impact of new information technologies. Dr. Besser is very involved in intellectual property issues, particularly as they pertain to information in digital form. He was a member of the National Academy of Science panel that authored “The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age,” and he has written several articles and participated in numerous debates on intellectual property (particularly in the library and the arts community). His most recent articles use the loss of public spaces in the physical world as a metaphor forthe loss of a public domain in the digital world. Ryan Craig Ryan Craig is with Warburg Pincus, the international private equity firm, where he invests in and works with education and training companies. Before joining Warburg Pincus, Mr. Craig was a co-founder of Fathom, the leading online learning company formed by Columbia University, Cambridge, The University of Chicago, LSE, The New York Public Library, The British Library, The University of Michigan and other world-class universities, museums, libraries and research institutions. Prior to joining Fathom, Mr. Craig was a business development consultant for a number of innovative broadcast, cable and Internet education companies. Mr. Craig began his consulting career at McKinsey & Company, where he advised top management in the music, video, cable, telecommunications and Internet industries on strategic and operational projects. Mr. Craig is the author of "Copyright and the Development of Internet Education," a paper published in the millennial edition of the Journal of the Copyright Society this past year and that received the Seaton Prize for best article by an author under age 40. Mr. Craig received his J.D. from Yale Law School and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale College with distinction in both literature and economics. Adam Eisgrau Adam Eisgrau brings to the Wexler Group more than 15 years of wide-ranging experience in the private, public and government sectors. As Judiciary Committee Counsel to Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) from 1993 to 1995, Eisgrau was intimately involved in many of the most controversial and cutting edge policy issues of the time, including: intellectual property protection, high-tech and general immigration matters, product liability and bankruptcy law reform, as well as the Senate’s historic vote to prospectively ban assault weapons. Upon leaving the Hill, Eisgrau joined the American Library Association’s Washington Office as the organization’s first Legislative Counsel. Through early 1999, he served as the group’s principal domestic and international lobbyist on intellectual property issues as Congress and the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) wrestled with the reform of “IP” law for the internet age. Eisgrau also was a primary organizer and media spokesperson for the more than 40 public and private sector members of the Digital Future Coalition, representing the Coalition in Geneva at the WIPO’s historic 1996 treaty conference and before Congress in subsequent debate over the treaty’s implementation. Adam began his Washington career in 1984 practicing communications law with a focus on then-emerging technologies now at the fore of the communications revolution, such as high definition television, satellite radio and TV, and electronic device testing regulation. An expert in Congressional trench “warfare,” Eisgrau comes to the Wexler Group directly from Handgun Control (chaired by Sarah Brady), where he oversaw Federal Relations and Public Policy. A native New Yorker, Eisgrau received his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1984 and graduated magna cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1980. He and his wife, Shelley, live in the heart of Washington. Peter Jaszi Peter Jaszi teaches at the Washington College of Law of The American University, in Washington, D.C., where he directs the new Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic and the Program on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest. Professor Jaszi is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and an experienced copyright litigator who lectures frequently to professional groups in the United States and abroad. He has served as a Trustee of the Copyright Society of the U.S.A., and currently sits on the editorial board of its journal. In 1994 he was a member of the Librarian of Congress Advisory Commission on Copyright Registration and Deposit. The following year he helped to organize the Digital Future Coalition. With Craig Joyce, William Patry, and Marshall Leaffer, he is co-author of a standard text on copyright. With Martha Woodmansee, he edited, The Construction of Authorship, a collection of essays on copyright and literary theory published by Duke University Press. Linda Tadic Currently Ms. Tadic is the Manager of the Digital Library at HBO. Ms. Tadic was the Digital Projects Coordinator at the Getty Research Institute. Prior to this position, she was Director of the Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia. She has also worked as a cataloger at the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, and at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. As a consultant for the National Moving Image Database at the American Film Institute, Tadic worked at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Anthology Film Archives, Electronic Arts Intermix, and the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at University of California, Berkeley. In 1998-1999, she was President of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA). Tadic received her MLIS from the University of California, Berkeley, her MFA from the University of California, San Diego, and her BFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Siva Vaidhyanathan Siva Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian and media scholar, is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001). He is currently working on a book about Napster and the ways we regulate our information ecosystem. Vaidhyanathan has written for many periodicals, including The Dallas Morning News, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and The Nation. He is a frequent contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education and MSNBC.COM. His research has been profiled by programs on National Public Radio, CNN, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, International Herald-Tribune Television, Pacifica Radio, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. He has also been featured in articles in AsianWeek, India Abroad, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Industry Standard, and ZDNet.com. Vaidhyanathan has testified at hearings held by the U.S. Copyright office and has submitted amicus briefs in some high-profile copyright cases. After five years as a professional journalist Vaidhyanathan earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Vaidhyanathan has taught at the University of Texas, Wesleyan University, and New York University. He is currently an assistant professor of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Donald J. Waters Donald J. Waters is the Program Officer for Scholarly Communications at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Before joining the Foundation, he served as the first Director of the Digital Library Federation (1997-1999), as Associate University Librarian at Yale University (1993-1997), and in a variety of other positions at the Computer Center, the School of Management, and the University Library at Yale. Waters graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in American Studies from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1973. In 1982, he received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Yale University. Waters conducted his dissertation research on the political economy of artisanry in Guyana, South America. He has edited a collection of African-American folklore from the Hampton Institute in a volume entitled Strange Ways and Sweet Dreams. In 1995-1996, he co-chaired the Task Force of the Commission of Preservation and Access and the Research Libraries Group on Archiving of Digital Information, and was the editor and a principal author of the Task Force Report. He is also the author of numerous articles and presentations on libraries, digital libraries, digital preservation, and scholarly communications. E. Jane White E. Jane White began her professional life on the West Coast as a Public Policy Researcher at the Stanford Research Institute, and followed her interests to organizing conferences, writing and producing for radio and documentary films. Jane joined ABC News in New York as Manager of Acquisitions and Licensing and held various positions as Manager of the ABC News Archives, as Director of Educational Services for ABC News, and then served five years as Co-Founder and Producer of ABC News Interactive. Back to the West Coast, Jane White joined Paramount Interactive as Executive Producer integrating high-end technology with innovative exploratory programs for children and oversaw several award winning titles. In 1994 she joined Viacom New Media in New York as Director of Development, and returned to San Francisco in 1996 joining Protozoa as Executive Producer. There Jane White oversaw the creation of educational pilots for the Disney Channel and worked with numerious other television stations in the area of children's programming. In 1999 Jane became Executive Vice President at Protozoa, which evolved into Dotcomix -- a 3-D performance animation company producing for television and the Web. Currently E. Jane White serves as Director of The International Chilren's Digital Library, The Internet Archive in San Francisco, California. Ms. White has a BA in Psychology and a Masters in Broadcasting.