New technology policy forum: the contributors

James Boyle

James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds professor of law at Duke Law School. His new co-authored work, Bound By Law , a “graphic novel” (aka. comic book) dealing with the effects of intellectual property on documentary film, will be published in March.

He is co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. He has also taught at American University, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

He is the author of Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society (Harvard University Press), A Politics of Intellectual Property and The Second Enclosure Movement together with many other articles on intellectual property, internet regulation and legal theory. In 2003 he was the special editor of Papers on the Public Domain.

Professor Boyle is a board member of Creative Commons and a member of the academic advisory boards of the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, Connexions Courseware, and of Public Knowledge. In addition to the Financial Times, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Times, Tikkun, Salon, Daedalus and The Christian Science Monitor. In 2003 he won the World Technology Network Award for Law.

Richard Epstein

Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service professor of law at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1972, and now serves as director of the Olin Centre in Law and Economics. He served as interim dean of the law school from February to June of 2001. He has also been the Peter and Kirstin senior fellow at the Hoover Institution since 2000.

In 1964 he received his BA degree in philosophy at Columbia College, where he graduated summa cum laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. He gained a first-class BA degree in law from Oxford University in 1966, and a law degree, cum laude, from Yale Law School in 1968.

He served as editor of the Journal of Legal Studies from 1981 to 1991, and of the Journal of Law and Economics from 1991 to 2001, before becoming director of the law and economics Program.

Prof Epstein’s most recent books are Torts (Aspen Law & Business 1999), Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty with the Common Good (Perseus Books, 1998), and Mortal Peril: Our Inalienable Rights to Health Care? (Addison-Wesley, 1997). He has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the California Bar, the Federalist Society and the Mont Pelerin Society.

Thomas Hazlett

Thomas W. Hazlett is Professor of Law & Economics at George Mason University, where is also serves as Director of the Information Economy Project of the National Center for Law & Technology.

An internationally recognised authority in regulation and public policy, he has published widely in academic journals such as the Journal of Law & Economics, the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Columbia Law Review, the Yale Journal on Regulation, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. He has also written for many popular publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Barron’s, Slate, the New Republic, Forbes, and the Weekly Standard. He frequently provides expert testimony to the courts, government agencies, and the U.S. Congress, and has served as a consultant to numerous public and private organizations throughout the world. His book, Public Policy Toward Cable Television, written with Prof. Matthew L. Spitzer, was published by the MIT Press in 1997.

Professor Hazlett has previously held faculty positions at the University of California, Davis, Columbia University, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1991-92, he served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C. At George Mason University, he teaches economics, strategy, and public policy in the School of Law

Eli Noam

Eli Noam has been professor of economics and finance at the Columbia Business School in New York since 1976. He also served for three years as a commissioner for public services of New York State, involved in establishing competition for domestic telecommunications and energy.

He heads the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information, a noted research centre on the business and policy issues of electronic mass media. The Institute is supported by the Sloan Foundation as a national industry research centre, and by several dozens industry affiliates from all parts of the communications industry and from many countries.

Prof Noam received bachelor, economics doctorate and law degrees from Harvard. He has published more than 20 books and 400 articles, many of them about international aspects of media and technology. He chairs the Columbia MBA concentration in media management and is active in electronic distance education. He is a radio ham and his hobbies are flying and diving.