Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor in Media Studies and Chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. He is a frequent contributor to the Chronicale of Higher Education, New York Times Magazine, The Nation, and Salon. He writes on intellectual property, digital culture, and the implications of digital copying and search functions for the preservation and propagation of knowledge. He is the author of the book The Googlization of Everything — and Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004).

He is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for the Future of the Book. He holds a Ph.D. in American studies and a B.A. in history from the University of Texas at Austin.