About the Authors

Authors are organized by Individual/Organization in order of appearance.

Marcus Kesler
Marcus Kesler is the chairman of the Pirate Party of Oklahoma.

Ryan Moffitt
Ryan Moffitt is a free speech and civil liberties activist from Plano, Texas. He is the co-founder and current chairman of the Florida Pirate Party, and is presently heavily engaged in a campaign for a state senate seat from Palm Beach County, Florida. The Florida Pirate Party website can be found at http://fl.pirate.is

Howard Denson
Howard Denson worked for several newspapers before spending nearly four decades as a teacher of English and humanities at what is now Florida State College at Jacksonville. He has edited or written for such periodicals as The State Street Review, Penchant (for the Florida First Coast Writers' Festival), The Write Stuff (for the North Florida Writers), theFCCJ Update, and evenThe International Journal of Elvisology and the Elvisian Era. He blogs at http://howarddenson.webs.com/apps/blog/

Reagen Dandridge Desilets
Reagen Dandridge Desilets resides with her husband and three children in the beautiful South Carolina Lowcountry. She first became interested in politics, beyond just voting, in 2008. She's gone from once being a straight-ticket GOP voter to a free-market libertarian and agorist. Those that have helped her better understand politics and economics include friend, activist, and author, Tarrin P. Lupo as well as Murray Rothbard and Friedrich Hayek. In her agorist ventures, Reagen has found a niche in the world of publishing and has been working with self-published authors since July of 2010, starting with Tarrin (http://LupoLit.com). She has worked on all of his books, primarily with creative editing as well as print layout and ebook layout, and created and admins his websites. She is currently working with several more authors helping them convert from print to ebook and finding the right places to market them online, and is open to inquiries from anyone interested in publishing their own book. She believes wholeheartedly in the free market and is glad to be able to take part in helping the literary industry become more varied and diverse. Reagen's other interests include volunteering and reenacting, urban exploration, photography, writing, art (sketching and painting watercolors), and learning to live naturally. She spends time painting and playing with her children and helping them to better understand the world around them, from nature to politics. She has several books of her own in progress and hopes to have at least one complete and available by the end of 2011. Reagen can be contacted via Twitter @redd4a3 or email at redd4a3 at yahoo dot com. _____

Andrew Norton
Andrew “K'Tetch” Norton is a politicized engineer. British born, he now lives with his wife and three children in the state of Georgia, where he analyzes technology, and political practices. He was the first recognized head of Pirate Party International, a post he took on after almost a year and a half running the US party. He has been involved in politics for almost 15 years, including time spent with the Liberal Party and Conservative Party in the UK and the Libertarian Party in the US. His hobbies include science fiction, astronomy, and particle physics, and his core belief is that Personal Integrity and Honesty is the core to a functional society. He blogs at http://falkvinge.net and his own site, http://ktetch.blogspot.com/ He also Tweets @ktetch.

William Sims Bainbridge
William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University, taught in universities for twenty years, and then joined the National Science Foundation, where he currently is a program director in Human- Centered Computing. He is author or co-author of 20 scientific books and over 200 shorter publications. Several of his major projects were based on computer software he programmed, most recently the 2006 book God from the Machine: Artificial Intelligence Models of Religious Cognition. Four of his earlier projects were textbook-software packages, and three books focused on the sociology of space exploration. He has also published extensively in the sociology of religion, notably The Sociology of Religious Movements (1997) and Across the Secular Abyss (2007). Most recently he has written about virtual gameworlds in Online Multiplayer Games (2010), The Warcraft Civilization (2010), and The Virtual Future (2011). He edited a pair of two-volume reference works, Encyclopedia ofHuman-Computer Interaction (2004) and Leadership in Science and Technology (2012), plus the proceedings of the first major scientific conference held inside a computer game, Online Worlds (2010).

Kembrew McLeod
A journalist, activist, artist, and professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa, Kembrew McLeod is the author of Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership, and Intellectual Property Law and has written music criticism for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Spin, Mojo, and the 2004 edition of the New Rolling Stone Album Guide. He is also the co-producer of a documentary on intellectual-property law, Copyright Criminals: This Is a Sampling Sport, which is currently in production, and he worked as a documentary producer at the Media Education Foundation. McLeod was involved in the traveling art show Illegal Art: Freedom of Expression in the Corporate Age, which traveled to New York, Chicago,Washington,D.C., and was hosted by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Artist Gallery in 2003. You can download some of his work from his Web site, http://kembrew.com

Dr. Danah Boyd
Dr. Danah Boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. Her work examines everyday practices involving social media, with specific attention to youth engagement, privacy, and risky behaviors. She recently co-authored Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning With New Media. She co-directed the Youth and Media Policy Working Group,funded by the MacArthur Foundation. She blogs at http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/ and tweets at @zephoria.

Travic McCrea
Travis McCrea is a 21 year old activist and entrepreneur, formerly an officer of the United States Pirate Party. He has moved to Canada and has run for Parliament through Pirate Party Canada, and uses direct action to protect civil liberties and the internet. He blogs at http://falkvinge.net and his own site, http://travismccrea.com

Loreley MacTavish
Loreley MacTavish is a staunch supporter of human rights and privacy. She is an intensely private individual. She only agreed to allow us to run her piece in this book on the condition that we not divulge her identity. It is sad that such a remarkable person feels compelled to hide behind a curtain such as this, but these are the times we live in.

Rick Falkvinge
Rick Falkvinge is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He is also a net activist, building tunnels and tools whenever and wherever. His website is http://falkvinge.net He may also be found on Twitter at @Falkvinge.

Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow (http://craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and blogger – the co-editor of Boing Boing (http://boingboing.net) and the author of Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels like FOR THE WIN and the bestselling LITTLE BROTHER. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co- founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.

Lawrence Lessig
Lawrence Lessig is a professor at Harvard Law School and is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. The author of The Future of Ideas, Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace, Free Culture, Remix, and Republic, Lost, he is the chair of the Creative Commons project (http://creativecommons.org). He studied at the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School, and he clerked for Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. His website is http://lessig.org

Brad Hall
Brad Hall is the vice-chairman of the Florida Pirate Party and spokesman for the United States Pirate Party. He has been involved in Pirate Politics since 2009.

Nina Paley
Nina Paley is the creator of the animated musical feature film Sita Sings the Blues, which has screened in over 150 film festivals and won over 35 international awards including the Annecy Grand Crystal, The IFFLA Grand Jury Prize, and a Gotham Award. Her adventures in our broken copyright system led her to copyLeft her film, and join QuestionCopyright.org as Artist-in-Residence. Prior to becoming an animator Nina was a syndicated cartoonist; she is now re-releasing all her old comics under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license. A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, Nina is currently producing a series of animated shorts about intellectual freedom called Minute Memes. http://www.ninapaley.com http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/ http://questioncopyright.org/ http://mimiandeunice.com/

Electronic Frontier Foundation
From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990 - well before the Internet was on most people's radar - and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights. Blending the expertise of lawyers, policy analysts, activists, and technologists, EFF achieves significant victories on behalf of consumers and the general public. EFF fights for freedom primarily in the courts, bringing and defending lawsuits even when that means taking on the US government or large corporations. By mobilizing more than 61,000 concerned citizens through our Action Center, EFF beats back bad legislation. In addition to advising policymakers, EFF educates the press and public. http://eff.org/

The United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945 after the Second World War by 51 countries committed to maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights. Their website is http://un.org