Patricia Aufderheide (Ph.D., Minnesota), is a professor in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., and director of the Center for Social Media there. She serves as director of the Independent Television Service, which produces innovative television programming for underserved audiences under the umbrella of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She also serves on the film advisory board of the National Gallery of Art, and on the editorial boards of a variety of publications, including Communication Law and Policy, and In These Times newspaper. She is the author most recently of "The Daily Planet: A Critic on the Capitalist Culture Beat" (2000), "Communications Policy in the Public Interest: The Telecommunications Act of 1996" (1999), and editor of "Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding" (Graywolf Press). She has been a Fulbright and John Simon Guggenheim fellow and has served as a juror at the Sundance Film Festival among others. Aufderheide is a prolific cultural journalist, policy analyst, and editor on media and society, and has received numerous journalism and scholarly awards.

Jennifer Holt (PhD, UCLA) is a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California in the School of Cinema-Television and has also taught at UCLA and UC-Santa Barbara. She is a media historian specializing in the political economy and industrial history of American film and television. Her current research looks at the effects of deregulation and current policy on the industrial structure and entertainment products of today’s global media conglomerates. She is finishing a manuscript entitled “In Deregulation We Trust: The Business of Entertainment in the New Hollywood.”

Robert McChesney is one of the nation's leading media researchers and analysts, whose pioneering work focuses on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. A research professor at the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, McChesney has written or edited eight books and more than 120 journal articles on media and politics. His most recent book, "The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communications Politics in the 21st Century," examines the decline in hard news, the growth of "info-tainment" and "advertorials," staff cuts and concentration of ownership, and the increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. It provides a comprehensive critique of journalism with a detailed analysis of contemporary media policies and practices. Historian Howard Zinn said that McChesney in "The Problem of the Media" follows in the great tradition of Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, I.F. Stone, and Ben Bagdikian in exposing the ruthless hold of corporate power on the nation's media. He brings the analysis up to date in this revealing book, and suggests how we may work to create the free marketplace of information that is essential if we are to live in a democratic society."

Sarah M. Pritchard (MA and MLS, University of Wisconsin-Madison) became the University Librarian at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1999. Before coming to UCSB, she was the Director of Libraries at Smith College, and had previously worked at the Library of Congress, and the Association of Research Libraries. She's active in major initiatives of the Association of Research Libraries, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the University of California library system. In the American Library Association she has held numerous positions; she currently chairs the Committee on Professional Ethics, and has just completed three terms on the ALA Council. In California she is a gubernatorial appointee to the state board of the Library of California multitype cooperative network. In 2001, she was selected by the Association of College and Research Libraries to receive the Career Achievement Award in Women's Studies Librarianship. She has served on several grant and editorial review panels and is the author of over 70 articles and reviews on library management, information technology, women's studies librarianship, and consortial library projects. At UCSB, she oversees a staff of 175 and acquisitions of print and electronic resources costing over $6 million annually from publishers and other providers all over the world.

Mark Rose is a Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1977, and is also currently Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel. He received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1961, a B.Litt. from Oxford University in 1963, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1967, and has taught at Yale University and the University of Illinois as well as at UCSB. From 1989 to 1994 he was Director of the systemwide University of California Humanities Research Institute, located on the Irvine campus. He is the author of many books on subjects ranging from Shakespeare to Science Fiction as well as of "Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright" (Harvard University Press, 1993), which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He frequently serves as a consultant and expert in litigation involving allegations of copyright infringement. In 2002 he was the first layman chosen to deliver the important Melville B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture on Copyright at the UCLA Law School. His current interests include both Shakespeare and the history of intellectual property.

Stanton L. ("Larry") Stein received his B.A. with honors in 1966 and his J.D. in 1969 from the University of Southern California, where he was Associate Editor of the Southern California Law Review, was a Moot Court Champion, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He is a co-founder and past president of Public Counsel, a past president of the Barristers of the Beverly Hills Bar Association, and a past board member of Bet Tzedek Legal Foundation. He lectures frequently on legal issues in the entertainment industry, including film, television, and music. Mr. Stein was profiled in the May 2000 Los Angeles Magazine cover story. The article states that although Los Angeles has thousands of attorneys, only a handful can really make things happen. The article identifies Larry Stein as "the lawyer Hollywood thesps call when they want to litigate a contract," especially his "vertical integration" suit brought by David Duchovny against the producers of the X-Files.

William B. Warner (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University) is Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of the University of California Digital Cultures Project, housed at UCSB. Dr. Warner conducts research on the Enlightenment, the novel, the history of media culture from the eighteenth century to the present, and free speech and censorship. His books include “Licensing Entertainment: the Elevation of Novel Reading, 1684-1750” (1998), “Chance and the Text of Experience: Freud, Nietzsche, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet” (1986), “Cultural Institutions of the Novel” (edited, 1996), and “Reading Clarissa: The Struggles of Interpretation” (1979). His current research project is focused on Early American networks. It is part of a book project entitled, “American Networks: from the Continental Congress to the Internet”.

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