David A. Bollier is an author, activist, blogger, and independent scholar with a primary focus on “the commons” as a new paradigm for economics, politics, and culture. After working for nearly a decade in Washington, DC, on a range of policy related projects, Bollier began a second career as an independent policy analyst, activist, and political writer. He is the founding editor of Onthecommons.org (2002 – 2010), co-founder and principal of the international consulting project Commons Strategy Group, and co-director of the Commons Law Project. Bollier collaborated with Norman Lear from 1985 through 2010 on a variety of public affairs and political projects, and since 2002 he has been a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Bollier is also the co-founder of Public Knowledge, a Washington-based advocacy organization for the public stake in the Internet, telecommunications, and copyright policy, and has been a rapporteur for the Aspen Institute’s Communications and Society Program for over twenty years.
Bollier has written ten books, including Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own (The New Press, 2009); Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Won and Control Culture (Wiley, 2005); and Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Commons Wealth (Routledge, 2002). He is co-editor, with Silke Helfrich, of The Life of Commons: Another World is Possible Beyond Market and State; and co-author, with Burns Weston, of the Greenkeeping Governance: Toward a Law of the Ecological Commons.
