"Mike is a tenacious defender of First Amendment rights, and he knows the constitutional issues involved better than almost anybody. His online discussion style is such that everybody who tangles with him is careful before they dive in. He takes every aspect of every sentence that somebody has written and provides the refutation in detail." -THE JUDGE (David R. Johnson

Mike Godwin

MiKE GODWIN served as the first Staff Counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where he informed users of electronic networks about their legal rights and responsibilities, instructed criminal lawyers and law-enforcement personnel about computer civil-liberties issues, and conducted seminars about civil liberties in electronic communication for a wide range of groups.

Godwin has published articles for print and electronic publications on topics such as electronicsearches and seizures, the First Amendment & electronic publications, and the application of international law to computer communications. In 1991-92, Godwin chaired a committee of the Massachusetts Computer Crime Commission, where he supervised the drafting of recommendations to Governor Weld for the development of computer-crime statutes.

Godwin has written articles about social and legal issues on the electronic frontier that have appeared in the Whole Earth Review, Quill, Index on Censorship, Internet World, WIRED & HotWired, and Playboy. From 1999 to 2001, Godwin served as a reporter on e-commerce and intellectual-property issues for American Lawyer Media, first as senior editor of E-Commerce Law Weekly, then as chief correspondent of IP Worldwide.

Most recently, he has been a senior policy fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and he now serves as senior technology counsel for Public Knowledge, and is a contributing editor at Reason.

Godwin served as co-counsel to the plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case Reno v. ACLU. EFF was also a plaintiff in that case. He is the author of Cyber Rights: Defending Free Speech in the Digital Age.

Further Reading: "The Defender" in Digerati

Beyond Edge: "Meme, Counter-meme" in Wired (Godwin on Godwin's Law)