Tim Wu, Freedom Fighter

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Wu's work exploring the nexus of communications and the law has made him the field's most important new voice. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor who has been the leader in arguing for reduced restrictions on what can go up on the Internet, predicts that Wu will become even more influential than he himself has been: "The second generation always has a bigger impact than the first."

At Columbia, Wu brings a quirky sensibility to the job. On a recent afternoon, he strolled into the classroom with a furry mouse costume. Wu brought the prop as a visual aid to discuss copyright law. He slipped on a pair of mittens and asked the class: "Do I have copyright protection?" A few students correctly said no. Then Wu put on a giant mouse mask and waved his hands in the air like some surreal Disneyland character. "Do I have copyright protection now?" he asked. The class erupted into laughter. Wu's point was that because costumes are useful articles, not works of art, they do not merit copyright protection.

An Indirect Career Path

Born to a Taiwanese father and British mother, Wu was taught to think unconventionally. His hippie parents met in grad school at the University of Toronto in the 1960s. His parents, both immunologists, sent him and his younger brother to alternative schools that emphasized creativity. After Wu's father died, in 1980, his mother bought him and his brother an Apple II computer with some of the insurance money. Thus began his fascination with computers.

Initially, Wu studied biochemistry at McGill University. But he was a disaster in the lab. Once, he accidentally contaminated it with radioactive material. "It was like Silkwood," he quips.

After college, Wu decided to apply to law school on a whim. At Harvard, he merely drifted through his classes until he took a course on technology and the law with Lessig, who was teaching there at the time. "That's when I first started thinking of becoming a law professor," says Wu. Armed with a strong recommendation from Lessig, Wu landed a plum clerkship with Federal Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner and later clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

Yet, instead of heading for academia or a white-shoe firm, Wu moved to Silicon Valley in 2000 and took a marketing job with a startup that made communications gear. He wanted to get inside the technology world. But Wu soon became disillusioned with the business. "Most of our products were designed to control the Internet and extract revenue," he says. "My stomach wasn't in it."

In 2002, he landed a job teaching law at the University of Virginia. After Lessig suggested he work on a paper related to corporate control of the Internet, Wu explored the field. Thanks to his stint in the Valley, Wu understood how computer networks operated. He poured that knowledge into a paper exposing many of the restrictions that broadband communications providers imposed on their customers, such as constraints on bandwidth usage or bans on setting up wireless networks.

In 2003, Wu presented the paper. It fell flat. A year later, though, his message was heard—and amplified—when former FCC Chairman Michael Powell cited his Net neutrality work in a speech. "That's when things took off," says Wu.

Ante is Computer Editor for BusinessWeek .