- Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic. He is currently professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trade ...
- Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation. Builder AU recently caught up with RMS about his achievements, the Free Software movement and his concerns with the US-Australian Free Trade Agreement. He will be in Australia on October 5 to speak at the Builder Conference in Sydney.
- Dan Gillmor
Dan Gillmor is a noted American technology writer and former columnist for the "San Jose Mercury News". He was one of the leading chroniclers of the Silicon Valley dot com boom and its subsequent bust. Gillmor is also the author of a popular weblog covering technology news and the Northern California technology business sector, criticizing rigid enforcement of copyrights, and commenting on politics from a frequently left-wing perspective.
- Richard Prince
Richard Prince is an American painter and photographer. His works have often been the subject of debates within the art world. Trained as a figure painter, Prince began creating collages containing photographs in 1975. His image, ‘Untitled (Cowboy), a rephotograph constructed from cigarette advertisements, was the first ‘photograph’ to raise more than $1 million at auction when it was sold at Christie's New York in 2005.
- Peter Smith
Sir Peter Winston Smith (born 1 May 1952), styled The Hon. Mr Justice Peter Smith (a name correctly abbreviated in English legal writing as 'Peter Smith J') is a Judge of the High Court of Justice in England and Wales, assigned to the Chancery Division. He has presided over several prominent cases. These include a suit between boxer Lennox Lewis and his promoter Panos Eliades, …
- Michael Geist
Michael Allen Geist (born 11 July 1968) is a Canadian academic, and the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. Geist was educated at the University of Western Ontario, Osgoode Hall Law School, Cambridge University and the Columbia Law School. His weekly columns on new technology and its legal ramifications appear in the "Toronto Star" and the "Ottawa Citizen".
- Michael S. Hart
Michael Stern Hart (b. 1947 in Tacoma, Washington) is an American best known as the founder of Project Gutenberg (PG) which makes electronic books freely available via the Internet. At least one version of each book is a plain text file that can be displayed on virtually any computer. Most of the early postings were personally typed in by himself. Today, the e-texts are produced (usually scanned) by Project Gutenberg's many volunteers.
- Michael Campbell
Michael Shane Campbell CNZM (born February 23, 1969) is a New Zealand golfer who is best-known for having won the 2005 US Open and the richest prize in golf, the £1,000,000 HSBC World Match Play Championship, in the same year. He is a member of the European Tour. Ethnically, he is predominantly Māori, from the Ngati Ruanui (father's side) and Nga Rauru (mother's side) iwi. He also has some Scottish ancestry, being a great-great-great-grandson of John Logan Campbell, …
- 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), and The Anarchist in the Library (Basic Books, 2004). Vaidhyanathan has written for many periodicals, including The Chronicle of Higher Education , The New York Times Magazine , MSNBC.COM , Salon.com , openDemocracy.net , and The Nation .
- Tim Wu
Tim Wu (吳修銘) is a professor at Columbia Law School and a writer for Slate Magazine. He is best known for popularizing the concept of "network neutrality". Professor Wu's specialty is copyright and telecommunications policy. He has a well-known series of articles on network neutrality, and is often credited with coining the term. For his work in this area, Professor Wu was named one of Scientific American's 50 people of the year in 2006.
- Jack Valenti
Jack Joseph Valenti was a long-time president of the Motion Picture Association of America. During his 38-year tenure in the MPAA, he created the MPAA film rating system, and he was generally regarded as one of the most influential pro-copyright lobbyists in the world.
- Fredrik Ljungberg
Karl Fredrik Ljungberg (born 16 April, 1977 in Vittsjö, Hässleholm) is a Swedish Footballer who currently plays for Arsenal. He plays as an attacking midfielder and is the captain of the Swedish National Football team
- Hilary Rosen
Hilary B. Rosen was the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America from 1996 to 2003 and was the senior executive there for 10 years prior to becoming CEO. Under Rosen, the RIAA advanced a legal and PR campaign to limit the swapping of copyrighted music, a practice whose popularity increased dramatically with improved personal computer multimedia capabilities and expanded broadband Internet access.
- Steve Sidwell
Steve Sidwell is a conductor, composer, and instrumentalist specialising in swing music. He is also the trumpeter for the Michael Nyman Band. He conducted the band during Robbie Williams' performance in the Royal Albert Hall. This performance was later released as the DVD Robbie Williams Live at the Albert. Sidwell conducted the music for "The Chris Moyles Show" on BBC Radio One.
- David Bruce
David Bruce (born 1970) is a British composer. David began his undergraduate studies in music in 1988 at Nottingham University (composition tutors included Jim Fulkerson and Nicholas Sackman), before moving on to the Royal College of Music (1991-3) where he obtained a Masters Degree in Composition, studying with Tim Salter and George Benjamin; and a PhD in Composition at King's College London (1995-9), under the supervision of Sir Harrison Birtwistle.
- Ann Landers
Esther "Eppie" Pauline Friedman Lederer, better known as Ann Landers (July 4, 1918 - June 22, 2002), was best known for writing the famous syndicated advice column "Ann Landers." For some 45 years, it was a regular feature in many newspapers across North America. In it, people wrote the columnist for advice and she answered. Lederer's writing style was direct, but often witty and sometimes acerbic.
- Terry Goodkind
Terry Goodkind 's first novel, Wizard's First Rule (1994), established him immediately as a major voice on the epic fantasy scene. Subsequent books in the Sword of Truth series have climbed steadily up the national bestseller lists. The saga of The Sword of Truth started growing in Goodkind's mind during the early 1990s, while he was building his house in the forests of the northeastern U.S. "It started with the character of Kahlan, and grew from that seed," he recalls.
- Fred von Lohmann
Fred von Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property matters. He has received the California Lawyer of the Year Award. In that role, he has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in a variety of copyright and trademark litigation.
- Daniel Taylor
Canadian painter Daniel Taylor is internationally renowned for his high realism portraits and wildlife art. For the greater part of his life he lived with his family in the interior of British Columbia. This wilderness setting with its abundant wildlife has been a source of great inspiration. Today, Taylor’s art can be found in both private and public collections internationally and his work has been prominently displayed in countries such as Canada, Japan, United States, …
- Bud Fisher
Harry Conway "Bud" Fisher (April 3, 1885 - September 7, 1954) was an American cartoonist who created the first successful daily comic strip in the United States. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Fisher studied at the University of Chicago then went to work in San Francisco as a journalist and sketch artist in the sports department of the San Francisco Chronicle. In late-1907, he introduced a comic strip character he called "Mr.
- Jonathan Tasini
Jonathan Tasini (born 1956 in Houston, Texas), is the current president of the Economic Future Group, a national consulting group in the United States. He is a strategist, organizer, activist, commentator and writer, primarily focusing his energies on the topics of work, labor and the economy. He writes most frequently for the popular labor and economy blog Working Life.
- Leo Buscaglia
Leo Buscaglia , known as "Dr. Hug," was the author of a series of best-selling books on loving and human relationships. Born in 1924, he was the son of Italian immigrants in Los Angeles. He earned a bachelor's degree in English and speech, a master's degree in language and speech pathology, and a Ph.D. in language and speech pathology.
- John Porcaro
John Patrick Joseph Porcaro (born John Joseph Porcaro), also known by the pseudonym John St. Patrick, is a Catholic composer and information scientist. Patrick's main work as a composer is typically described as minimalist, a term most minimalist composers, including Patrick, object to. His work is also described as experimental or ambient. He has written musical compositions for a variety of instruments and settings, including tuba and piano duets, …
- Dmitry Sklyarov
Dmitry Sklyarov is a Russian computer programmer known for his 2001 arrest by American law enforcement over software copyright restrictions. He was later released and the charges were dropped.
- Nate James
Nate James is a British soul singer / songwriter who released his debut album, "Set The Tone", in 2005. Formally known as Nathaniel Speas, he was born on September 15, 1979 on the US military base at Lakenheath to an American father and British mother. His debut album, heavily influenced by soul artists such as Marvin Gaye, Prince and Stevie Wonder, won James widespread critical acclaim and two MOBO nominations for Best Newcomer and Best R&B Artist.
- Allegra Goodman
Allegra Goodman, Ph. D. (b. 1967) is an American author based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her most recent novel, "Intuition", was published in 2006. Goodman wrote and illustrated her first novel at the tender age of seven.
- Peter Doyle
Peter Doyle (born Peter John Doyle in Melbourne, Australia on 28 July 1949 - died 13 October 2001) was an Australian pop singer who had success with a number of Top 40 hits in Australia in the 1960s, then success internationally as a member of the New Seekers in the early 1970s, before resuming a solo career in 1973.
- Eric Eldred
Eric Eldred, born 1943, is an American literacy advocate and the proprietor of the unincorporated Eldritch Press, a website which republished the works of others which are in the public domain (that is, no longer subject to copyright). Eldritch Press for some years ran on a Linux server from Eldred's home and is now hosted by Ibiblio and no longer maintained by him.
- Jan Brzechwa
Jan Brzechwa, real name Jan Wiktor Lesman (August 15, 1898 - July 2, 1966) was a Polish poet and author, mostly known for his contribution to children's literature. He was also a famous translator of Russian literature, translating mostly works by Aleksandr Pushkin, Sergey Yesienin and Vladimir Mayakovskiy. He was married twice and had a daughter, Krystyna, from his first marriage. "Brzechwa" is the writer's pseudonym; it is a name for the flight, …
- Faith Ringgold
Faith Ringgold (born October 8 1930) is an African-American artist and author. Ringgold was raised in Harlem and educated at the City College of New York, where she studied with Robert Gwathmey and Yasuo Kuniyoshi. She was greatly influenced by the fabric she worked with at home with her mother who was a seamstress and has used fabric in many of her artworks.
- Harry Benjamin
Harry Benjamin was a German-born sexologist. He is best known for his pioneering work with transsexualism.
- William Craig
William (Bill) Craig is a Canadian broadcaster ("not" affiliated with the Canadian company Craig Media). Craig began his career as a researcher for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "This Hour Has Seven Days". He subsequently joined the programming departments at the CBC, TVOntario and Rogers Cable. He was also a policy analyst for the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in the 1970s.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant (born December 9, 1933 in London, England) is an author and syndicated cartoonist living in Santa Barbara, California. He is best known for "Pot-Shots", a single-panel comic of illustrated one-liners, which began syndication in the United States in 1975. "The Wall Street Journal" described him in a 1992 profile as "history's only full time, professional published epigrammatist." In a copyright infringement suit filed by Brilliant, …
- Bikram Choudhury
Bikram Choudhury (born 1946) is an Indian yoga guru and the founder of Bikram Yoga, also known as "Hot Yoga", a copyrighted series of 26 hatha yoga postures that are performed in a hot (105 degrees Fahrenheit or greater) environment. Bikram is a disciple of Bishnu Ghosh (brother of Paramahansa Yogananda, author of "Autobiography of a Yogi").
- Wen Spencer
Wen Spencer (born 1963) is an American Science fiction and fantasy writer whose books center around characters with unusual abilities, and which might be regarded as original variations on the standard vampire and werewolf themes. Spencer attended the University of Pittsburgh, gaining a degree in Information science, and has been active in science fiction fandom.
- Michał Witkowski
Michał Witkowski is a gay Polish author. His first book, "Copyright", released in 2001, was a collection of short stories. On December 17, 2004, "Lubiewo" was released - a radically queer novel that sold an estimated 15,000 copies. Translations into German, English, French, Russian, Czech, Lithuanian and Ukrainian are just being made.
- Cory Doctorow
A former EFF staff member and recipient of EFF's 2007 Pioneer Award , Cory Doctorow is now an EFF fellow. In addition to being an award-winning author of both science fiction and nonfiction works, he is co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing . His novels include Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom ; Little Brother ; and Eastern Standard Tribe . He enjoys googling for interesting facts about long walks on the beach.
- Colleen Doran
Colleen Doran (born July 24, 1963) is an American comic book writer and artist, best known for her fantasy series "A Distant Soil". Doran broke into the comic book industry when still a teenager, in the 1980s. "A Distant Soil" was originally published by Wendy and Richard Pini's WaRP Graphics, publishers of "Elfquest", but Doran subsequently left the company due to an acrimonious dispute with Richard Pini, …
- Stephen Joyce
Stephen James Joyce is the grandson of James Joyce and the controversial executor of Joyce's estate. Though the trustee of the Estate of James Joyce is Seán Sweeney, Stephen Joyce has taken an active role in all legal matters relating to Joyce's works. He has brought numerous lawsuits or threats of legal action against scholars, biographers and artists attempting to quote from Joyce's literary work or personal correspondence.
- Richard Peters
Richard Peters, Jr. was the fourth reporter of decisions of the United States Supreme Court, serving from 1828 to 1843. He was born in Belmont, Pennsylvania, the son of Continental Congressman Richard Peters, Jr.. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1800. He served as the solicitor of Philadelphia County in 1822-1825. When he took the post of court reporter, he condensed the reports of his three predecessors, eliminating the arguments of counsel, annotations, …