William W. Fisher

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William "Terry" W. Fisher III is the WilmerHale Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Harvard Law School and director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. His primary research and teaching areas are intellectual property law and legal history.

In his book Promises to Keep: Technology, Law and the Future of Entertainment (Stanford University Press 2004), Fisher proposes replacing much of copyright and digital rights management with a government-administered reward system. Under such a scheme, movies and songs would be legal to download. Authors and artists would receive compensation from the government based on how often their works were read, watched, or listened to. The system would be funded by taxes.

Fisher is one of the founders of Noank Media, a private enterprise similar in many ways to the proposal of Promises to Keep. Noank licenses and distributes digital content by collecting blanket-license revenues from internet services providers and distributing revenues to authors and artists based on the size of their audience.

An alumnus of Amherst College, Fisher received a law degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. in the history of American civilization from Harvard University. He was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall.