EFF is proud to announce our newest Chair of our Board of Directors, renowned legal expert Pamela Samuelson. Pam has served on EFF’s board for nearly 20 years, and her deep knowledge of digital copyright law, intellectual property, and information policy has made EFF a stronger organization.

Pam is a co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology—an internationally respected research center at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Pam is also co-founder and chair of the board of the Authors Alliance, a non-profit group that promotes the public interest in access to knowledge. She has written and spoken extensively about the challenges that new information technologies pose for traditional legal regimes, as well as about privacy, the First Amendment, and other cyberlaw issues.

Pam’s scholarship complements the ongoing work at EFF, demonstrating why fair use and other exceptions and limitations are important to achieving copyright's constitutional goals, why the CASE Act bill to create a small claims board for adjudicating copyright cases is flawed, why the anti-circumvention rules outlawing reverse engineering of technical protection measures should be revised, and why courts should not extend copyright protections to application program interfaces. In addition to writing scholarly articles on these issues, she writes a regular column as a Contributing Editor of the ACM on legal and policy issues affecting computing professionals and frequently files amicus curiae briefs in important cases on behalf of intellectual property professors in cases such as the Oracle v Google case, review of which is pending before the Supreme Court. Pam’s influential work has brought honors from around the world, including a Women of Vision Award from the Anita Borg Institute and the IP3 award from Public Knowledge.

Pam succeeds former board chair Brian Behlendorf, who will now be the vice chair. We are very grateful for Brian’s time as leader of our Board of Directors, and are thrilled that he will continue to bring his technology expertise to our board. Thank you both Pam and Brian!