Siva Genius

My college buddy Siva Vaidhyanathan is a certifiable genius. I knew him back in the days when he was spilling Mickey's malt liquor on his sweat pants while we were working on the University of Texas' student newspaper. Instead of slugging it out permanently at a daily newspaper after graduation (he did this for awhile and then wised up), Siva stayed in Austin --- for like 14 years --- and wound up with a doctoral degree. He spun his knowledge of all things music and pop culture into something useful --- a much in demand expertise on copyright issues and laws. And he's now a published author and professor at NYU with a lovely wife, a free apartment in the village and a baby on the way. Siva has one of the lead articles on Salon.com today about the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the Grokster case. He does a great job of helping the world at large interpret latest ruling by the nation's highest court on peer-to-peer file sharing networks. And you only have to read the first paragraph of this article to see that Siva is funny as well as genius: "Note to technology developers who want to market products that will help people share copyrighted files: Whatever you do, don't end your brand name with "-ster"!

I'll say it again. Genius!