Tim Wu
Tim Wu is an American attorney, professor at Columbia Law School, and contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. He is known legally and academically for his enacted "Carterfone" proposal and other significant contributions to antitrust and wireless communications policy, and popularly, for coining the phrase network neutrality in his 2003 law journal article, Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination.
Wu is a scholar of the media and technology industries, and his academic specialties include antitrust, copyright, and telecommunications law. Wu was named to The National Law Journals "America's 100 Most Influential Lawyers" in 2013, as well as to the "Politico 50" in 2014 and 2015. Additionally, Wu was named one of Scientific American
From 2011 to 2012, Wu served as a senior advisor to the Federal Trade Commission, and from 2015–2016 he was senior enforcement counsel at the New York Office of the Attorney General, where he launched a successful lawsuit against Time Warner Cable for falsely advertising their broadband speeds. In 2016, Wu joined the National Economic Council in the Obama White House to work on competition policy.
Early life
Wu was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Basel, Switzerland, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. His father, Alan Ming-ta Wu, was from Taiwan and his mother, Gillian Wu, is British-Canadian. Both of his parents studied as immunologists at the University of Toronto. Wu and his younger brother were sent to alternative schools that emphasized creativity, where he befriended Cory Doctorow. Wu's father died in 1980 and his mother bought Wu and his brother an Apple II computer using some of the insurance money, starting Wu's fascination with computers.Wu attended McGill University, where he initially studied biochemistry, later switching his major to biophysics. He was graduated from McGill with a bachelor of science degree in 1995 and received his J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1998. At Harvard, he studied under copyright scholar Lawrence Lessig.
Career
Wu worked with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, after graduation from law school, and before starting a clerkship with Richard Posner on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998–1999. He also clerked for Stephen Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court in 1999–2000. Following his clerkships, Wu moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, worked at Riverstone Networks, Inc. and then entered academia at the University of Virginia School of Law.Wu was associate professor of law at the University of Virginia from 2002 to 2004, visiting professor at Columbia Law School in 2004, and, in 2005, visiting professor at both Chicago Law School and at Stanford Law School.
In 2006, he became a full professor at Columbia Law School and started Project Posner, a free database of all of Richard Posner's legal opinions. Wu called Posner "probably America's greatest living jurist".
''The Master Switch''
Wu's 2010 book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, described a long "cycle" whereby open information systems become consolidated and closed over time, reopening only after disruptive innovation. The book shows this cycle develop with the rise of the Bell AT&T telephone monopoly, the founding of the Hollywood entertainment industry, broadcast and cable television industries, and finally with the internet industry. He looks at the example of Apple Inc., which began as a company dedicated to openness, that evolved into a more closed system under the leadership of Steve Jobs, demonstrating that the internet industry will follow the historical cycle of the rise of information empires. The book was named one of the best books of 2010 by The New Yorker magazine, Fortune magazine, Amazon.com, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and others.New York politics
Wu ran for the Democratic nomination for Lieutenant Governor of New York in 2014, campaigning alongside gubernatorial candidate Zephyr Teachout. Wu and Teachout ran against Andrew Cuomo, the incumbent governor, and Kathy Hochul, an upstate Democrat and former Representative in the House. Teachout and Wu ran to the left of Cuomo and Hochul. Hochul won the race for Lieutenant Governor; Wu took 40% of the popular vote.In a Washington Post interview discussing his candidacy, Wu described his approach to the campaign as one positioned against the concentration of private power: "A hundred years ago, antitrust and merger enforcement was front page news. And we live in another era of enormous private concentration. And for some reason we call all these 'wonky issues.' They're not, really. They affect people more than half a dozen other issues. Day to day, people's lives are affected by concentration and infrastructure... You can expect a progressive-style, trust-busting kind of campaign out of me. And I fully intend to bridge that gap between the kind of typical issues in electoral politics and questions involving private power."
The New York Times editorial board endorsed Wu for lieutenant governor in the Democratic Party primary, although they offered no endorsement for the office of governor.
In September 2015, The New York Times reported Wu's appointment to the Office of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Wu works on issues involving technology, including protecting consumers and ensuring fair competition among companies that do business online.
Influence
Wu is credited with popularizing the concept of network neutrality in his 2003 paper Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination. The paper considered network neutrality in terms of neutrality between applications, as well as neutrality between data and quality of service-sensitive traffic, and he proposed some legislation, potentially, to deal with these issues.In 2006, Wu wrote "The World Trade Law of Internet Filtering", which analyzed the possibility of the World Trade Organization's treating censorship as a barrier to trade. In June 2007, when Google Inc. lobbied the United States Trade Representative to pursue a complaint against China's censorship at the WTO, Wu's paper was cited as a "likely source" for this idea. In 2006, Wu also was invited by the Federal Communications Commission to help draft the first network neutrality rules attached to the AT&T and BellSouth merger.
In 2007, Wu published a paper proposing a "Wireless Carterfone" rule for mobile phone networks; the rule was adopted on July 31, 2007 by the Federal Communications Commission for the United States 2008 wireless spectrum auction, with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps stating: "I find it extremely heartening to see that an academic paper—in this case by Professor Timothy Wu of Columbia Law School—can have such an immediate and forceful influence on policy." In November 2007, BusinessWeek credited Wu with providing "the intellectual framework that inspired Google's mobile phone strategy."
With his Columbia Law School colleagues Scott Hemphill and Clarisa Long, Wu co-directs the Julius Silver Program in Law, Science, and Technology. In August 2007, in collaboration with the University of Colorado School of Law's Silicon Flatirons Program, the Columbia Law School Program on Law and Technology launched a Beta version of AltLaw, which he produced.
Wu has appeared on the television programs The Colbert Report and Charlie Rose. He has also won two Lowell Thomas Awards for travel journalism.
Personal life
Wu is married to Kate Judge, also a Columbia law professor. They have two daughters.Selected publications
Books
- Goldsmith, Jack L., and Tim Wu. Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World. New York: Oxford UP
- Wu, Tim. . New York: Knopf
- Wu, Tim . New York: Knopf
- Wu, Tim . Columbia Global Reports
Articles
- , 2 J. on Telecomm. & High Tech. L. 141.
- . Slate, January 23, 2006. Accessed August 24, 2008.
- . Slate, May 6, 2006. Accessed August 24, 2008.
- , New America Foundation: Wireless Future Program. Working Paper No. 17, Newamerica.net
- Failed Aaron Swartz—And Us", The New Yorker News Desk blog, January 14, 2013.
- . Democracy Now!, February 27, 2015. Accessed October 20, 2015.
Audiovisual resources
- .