Brian Kahin
Director, Center for Information Policy
College of Information Studies, University of Maryland

Brian Kahin directs the Center for Information Policy at the University of Maryland. He is a visiting professor in the College of Information Studies with affiliate faculty appointments in the School of Public Affairs and the R.H. Smith School of Business. He is also a fellow at the Internet Policy Institute in Washington and a visiting scholar at the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy (University of California, Berkeley). His work has been supported by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the John and Mary R. Markle Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

From March 1997 to January 2000, Kahin served as a consultant and Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. As part of the Administration’s initiative on global electronic commerce, he initiated the interagency Working Group on the Digital Economy and chaired it on behalf of the National Economic Council. He also served as Vice Chair of the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy. At OSTP, he was responsible for issues in intellectual property, Internet policy, and electronic commerce. He was the first chair of the interagency working group on domain names and worked with research agencies and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to develop the Administration’s position on database protection legislation. He initiated and served as liaison to a study on standards and standards policy for the digital economy at the Science and Technology Policy Institute.

Kahin was previously founding director of the Information Infrastructure Project at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government (1989 to 1997). Initiated by Kahin and Lewis Branscomb, the Information Infrastructure Project was the first academic research program to address the social, economic, and policy implications of the Internet. Under Kahin, the Project was supported by a mix of special funding from foundations and federal agencies and general funding from corporations, including Bellcore, AT&T, IBM, Hughes, Motorola, EDS, Nynex, Digital Equipment, Apple, and Microsoft. It collaborated with a wide range of institutions, including the Global Information Infrastructure Commission, the Coalition for Networked Information, the Freedom Forum, the Annenberg Washington Program, the Library of Congress, the Cross-Industry Working Team, the Computer Systems Policy Project, and the International Telecommunication Union.

Kahin was also active in the early multimedia industry. He helped found the Interactive Multimedia Association in 1987 and served as part-time general counsel until he joined the White House in 1997. He directed the Association's Intellectual Property Project, which focused on technology-based management of content. He negotiated the IMA’s participation in the IMPRIMATUR consortium and in joint public programs with the U.S. Copyright Office. (The IMA merged with the Software Publishers Association in 1997.)

Kahin authored the first Internet RFC on commercialization of Internet in 1990. He is the editor of Building Information Infrastructure (McGraw-Hill, 1992) and co-editor of Public Access to the Internet (with James Keller; MIT Press, 1995), Standards Policy for Information Infrastructure (with Janet Abbate; MIT Press, 1995), National Information Infrastructure Initiatives (with Ernest Wilson; MIT Press, 1996), Borders in Cyberspace (with Charles Nesson; MIT Press, 1997), Coordinating the Internet (with James Keller; MIT Press, 1997), Internet Publishing and Beyond (with Hal Varian, MIT Press, 2000), and Understanding the Digital Economy (with Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Press, 2000). He was co-editor of the journal Information Infrastructure and Policy (IOS Press) from 1994 to 1996.

As Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School, Kahin developed courses on information technology, law and policy and information infrastructure. He initiated a joint course with Harvard Business School on information technology, business strategy and public policy and then, with Harvard Law School as well, a course on business and the Internet.

Kahin was appointed to the U.S. Advisory Committee on International Communications and Information Policy in1995 and chaired the Committee's Working Group on Intellectual Property, Interoperability and Standards. He was a member of the 1992-94 AAU Task Force on a National Strategy for Managing Scientific and Technical Information. He was cited by Newsweek as one of the "Net 50" of 1995.

Kahin has served on the board of Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, the editorial advisory boards of the Boston University Journal of Science & Technology Law and Cyberspace Lawyer, and the advisory board of the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities. He was on the original steering committee for the Software Patent Institute (1990-91) and subsequently served on the advisory board.

As a consultant, Mr. Kahin's clients have included EDUCOM, the Council on Library Resources, and the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment. As an attorney, he has also served as principal counsel to FARNET (Federation of American Research Networks) and the International Interactive Communications Society, the society for professionals in multimedia.

In 1983-85, Mr. Kahin was coordinator for the Research Program on Communications Policy at MIT and the MIT Communications Forum under Ithiel de Sola Pool. In previous careers, Kahin has been a consultant on arts and technology for a state arts agency, executive director of a media arts organization, lawyer in general practice, and screenwriter. He received a B.A. from Harvard College in 1969 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1976. He has been a member of the Wyoming State Bar since 1976.

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