Faculty - University of Virginia School of Law

CONTACT
sv2r@virginia.edu
(434) 243-4333

Siva Vaidhyanathan

Robertson Professor in Media Studies
Chair, Department of Media Studies, University of Virginia
Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin
B.A., University of Texas at Austin

Siva Vaidhyanathan is a cultural historian and media scholar, and is currently the Robertson Professor in Media Studies at the University of Virginia. From 1999 through the summer of 2007 he worked in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. Vaidhyanathan is a frequent contributor on media and cultural issues in various periodicals including the Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Salon.com, and he maintains a blog, www.googlizationofeverything.com. He is a frequent contributor to National Public Radio and to MSNBC.COM and has appeared in a segment of "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart. Vaidhyanathan is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book. In 2011 he was appointed chair of UVA's Department of Media Studies.

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.

He is noted for opposing the Google Books scanning project on copyright grounds. He has published the opinion that the project poses a danger for the doctrine of fair use, because the fair use claims are arguably so excessive that it may cause judicial limitation of that right.

Vaidhyanathan was born in Buffalo, N.Y., and attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning both a B.A. in history and a Ph.D. in American studies.

Publications
Current Courses
In the Media

"Borking Antitrust: Google Secures Its Monopoly" (Dissent, 01/04/2013)

"Person of the Year: The Runners Up" (The Hook, 12/13/2012)

"A New Era of Unfounded Hyperbole" (Cato Unbound, 11/16/2012)

"Google and Association of American Publishers Reach Settlement Agreement Over Book-digitizing Lawsuit" (Intellectual Property Brief, 10/23/2012)

"Amazon Struggles to Crack Publishing" (The Wall Street Journal, 10/17/2012)

"Universities Are Vast Copy Machines—and That’s a Good Thing" (Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/12/2012)

"Coalition of Faculty, Staff and Students Push for Transparency" (Cavalier Daily, 10/01/2012)

“What in the World is a MOOC?” (The Washington Post, 09/24/2012)

"Speaker Warns Students of Data Privacy" (The Daily Targum, 09/21/2012)

"New Territory for Ads, With a Moving Target" (The New York Times, 09/16/2012)

"Penn State’s Second Chance" (Slate, 07/23/2012)

"A Much Higher Education" (Slate, 06/27/2012)

"Strategic Mumblespeak" (Slate, 06/15/2012)

"Is the Internet Closing Our Minds Politically?" (NPR, 04/23/2012)

"The Web Is Turning Us Into Narrow-Minded Drones" (Slate, 04/18/2012)

"Listener Link Library: Add Your Reading Picks" (The Brian Lehrer Show, 04/17/2012)

"Voting Against the Algoithm" (Slate, 04/11/2012)

"Apple, Demystified" (Chronicle of Higher Education (author), 10/11/2011)

"Mayor's Office Fighting Piracy with New Competition" (Washington Square News, 10/04/2011)

"Friend's Books" (Business Insider, 10/01/2011)

"How is Google Changing Our Lives?" (KCRW, 09/22/2011)

"Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Google Antitrust Hearings" (The Takeaway, 09/21/2011)

"The Googlization of Everything (and Why We Should Worry)" (Times (of London) Higher Education Supplement, 08/11/2011)

"Pushing Back Against Legal Threats by Putting Fair Use Forward" (Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/29/2011)

"What's Next for Google Books?" (MSNBC Technolog, 03/28/2011)

“Thank You, Judge Chin” (Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/25/2011)

"Google Block: The Google Books Settlement Should Teach the Company Humility. It Won't. (Slate.com, 03/23/2011)

"Why Google Is Making Us Fat and Lazy " (Tech Crunch, 03/23/2011)

"State Department Spokesman Quits over Remarks (The Boston Globe, 03/14/2011)

"Google Eyes / UVA Prof Warns That Web Giant's Priorities Skew Results — and It Could Get Worse" (C-Ville, 03/08/2011)

"New Book Says Google is Too Powerful" (CNN, 02/27/2011)

"Google's Gadfly" (Inside Higher Ed, 02/16/2011)

"The Googlization of Books" (Publishers Weekly, 01/31/2011)

"U.Va. Prof Follows the ‘Googlization’ of Everything" (Virginia Lawyers Weekly [subscription required], 11/08/2010)

“Engineer’s Privacy Breach Raises Questions For Google” (International Business Times, 09/15/2010)

“Net Neutrality, A Musical Interpretation” (National Public Radio, 08/13/2010)

"Google Net Neutrality Stance Gives Net's Future to Corporations" (MSNBC, 08/10/2010)

“Verizon, Google Propose Web Traffic Rules” (National Public Radio, 08/09/2010)

"Google Starts Grant Program for Studies of Its Digitized Books" (Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/31/2010)

"Google Pulls Plug on Search Engine Operation in China" (Los Angeles Times, 03/22/2010)