Vaidhyanathan is of TamilIndian descent[3] and was born in Buffalo, New York, and attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning a BA in History in 1994 and a Ph.D. in 1999 in American Studies.[4] From 1999 through the summer of 2007 he worked in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Columbia University. From 1988 through 1993 he was a professional journalist working for several Texas daily newspapers. From 2003-2008 he ran a blog, Sivacracy.net, hosted by the Institute for the Future of the Book, which hosted a number of writers interested in society, education, copyright, technology, and related topics.[5][6]
Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity, NYU Press, 2001. (ISBN 978-0814788073)
The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control Is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, Basic Books, 2004. (ISBN 978-0465089857)
Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies, co-edited with Carolyn de la Peña, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. (ISBN 978-0801886515)
Vaidhyanathan speaking at GeorgetownThe Googlization of Everything -- and Why We Should Worry, University of California Press, 2011. (ISBN 978-0520258822). The text was in open development on a blog, launched September 27, 2007 in collaboration with the Institute for the Future of the Book.
Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2017. (ISBN 9780195372779)
Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us And Undermines Democracy, Oxford University Press, 2018. (ISBN 978-0190841164)
Camp, L. Jean. DRM: doesn't really mean digital copyright management
Eschenfelder, Kristin R. (2007) Every Library's Nightmare? Digital Rights Management and Licensed Scholarly Digital Resources
Ross, Andrew. "Technology and Below-the-Line Labor in the Copyfight over Intellectual Property". American Quarterly, Volume 58, Number 3, September 2006, pp. 743–766
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. "Critical Information Studies: A Bibliographic Manifesto". Cultural Studies 20(2/3) (March/May 2006): 292–315. ISSN 0950-2386 Download the .pdf