The Battle for the Internet: What the Future Holds for Copyright Law

NYU Stern + Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation 

May 2nd from 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Members of the NYU Community,

There has been an enormous debate around the recent legislative proposals in the area of online intellectual property.  With SOPA and PIPA gone and CISPA on the horizon, what will the future of copyright law look like? Join us for a panel discussion at NYU Stern as we try to demystify some of these very complex issues.

Panelists include:

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures

Fred Wilson is a New York-based venture capitalist who began his career in venture capital in 1987. In 1996 Fred Wilson founded Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm focused on Internet companies. Currently, Fred Wilson is the co-founder and managing partner of Union Square Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, Tumbler, Foursquare, and Zynga. Due to his successful investment track record and community involvement, Fred Wilson is recognized as a leading voice of the venture capital finance community.  

Fred has spoken in many interviews and blog posts about the alignment of goals between the content industry and the tech industry and we are fortunate to have him with to discuss this important and timely topic.

Alexis Ohanian of Reddit

Alexis Ohanian is the co-founder of reddit, a social-voting news website, which was acquired by Conde Nast in 2006. He is currently the founder of breadpig, a hub for geeky books and merchandise with a slant towards social enterprise, an angel investor with Das Kapital Capital, the East Coast Ambassador for venture fund Y Combinator, and a former Kiva Fellow. Alexis is also an advisor to the travel search website hipmunk which he helped launch in 2010.

In January of this year, Alexis Ohaninan and Reddit became some of the critical players in the Anti SOPA / PIPA protests that occurred in New York City and throughout the web. Alexis is an outspoken member of the New York tech community on issues relating to copyright, and we are delighted to have him on our panel.

Billy Chasen of Turntable.fm

Billy Chasen is the Co-founder of Turntable.fm, a social media website that allows users to interactively share music with eachother. Prior to Turntable.fm, Billy Chasen was the Founder and CEO stickybits.com. Prior to stickybits, Chasen was on the founding team of Betaworks, where he created chartbeat.com, a real-time analytics service and firef.ly, a chat service. As a tech entrepreneur building a company around interactive sharing of music, Billy Chasen has run into issues related to Copyright, and his company, Turntable.fm, enjoys protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. We are pleased to have Billy Chasen on our panel to enlighten us on the topic of Copyright from his point of view.