Mishi Choudhary is a technology lawyer and online civil liberties activist working in the United States and India. She is the senior vice president and general counsel of Virtru, a role she started in 2022. Prior to that role, Mishi was the Legal Director of the Software Freedom Law Center as well as the Founder o
SFLC.in
SFLC.in brings together lawyers, policy analysts and technologists to fight for digital rights, produces reports, and studies on the state of the Indian internet, also has a productive legal arm. Under her leadership, SFLC.in has conducted landmark litigation cases, petitioned the government of India on freedom of expression and internet issues, and campaigned for WhatsApp and Facebook to fix a feature of their platform that has been used to harass women in India.

Education

Choudhary earned a bachelor's degree in political science and an LLB degree with Honors from the University of Delhi. As the first Free and Open Source Fellow of the

Software Freedom Law Center The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is an organization that provides ''pro bono'' legal representation and related services to not-for-profit developers of free software/open source software. It was launched in February 2005 with Eben Moglen ...

, she earned a Master of Laws degree from Columbia Law School where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. In 2023, she earned the Program for Leadership Development, Executive MBA equivalent from Harvard Business Schoo

Career

Choudhary started her career as a litigator at the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India. Following the completion of her Free and Open Source Fellowship, she started working with

as a Counsel. She served as the Director of International Practice from 2011 to 2013. In July, 2013 she was appointed the Legal Director of SFLC. At SFLC, she served as the primary legal representative of many of the world's most significant free software developers and non-profit distributors, including

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

Kodi (software) Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open-source media player and technology convergence software application developed by the Kodi Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium. Kodi is available for multiple operating systems and hardware pl ...

, the

Apache Software Foundation The Apache Software Foundation ( ; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) to support a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the ...

, and

OpenSSL OpenSSL is a software library for applications that provide secure communications over computer networks against eavesdropping, and identify the party at the other end. It is widely used by Internet servers, including the majority of HTTPS web ...

. She continues to serve some of these projects along with established businesses and startups, Governments using free software in their products and service offerings in the US, Europe, India, China and Korea. As of 2017, she is the only lawyer in the world to appear simultaneously on briefs in the US and Indian Supreme Courts in the same term. She was one of the lead counsels in

Shreya Singhal v. Union of India ''Shreya Singhal v. Union of India'' is a judgement by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India in 2015, on the issue of online speech and intermediary liability in India. The Supreme Court struck down Section 66A of the Information Tech ...

representing Mouthshut.com in which the Supreme Court of India delivered a landmark verdict, ruling Section 66A of the Information Technology Act as unconstitutional. In 2018, she launched her technology law and policy practice "Mishi Choudhary And Associates".

Honors and awards

In 2015, she was named one of the Asia Society's 21 young leaders building Asia's future for her work as a technology lawyer and online civil liberties activist. In 2016, the

Aspen Institute The Aspen Institute is an international nonprofit organization founded in 1949 as the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C., but also has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, its original home. Its stated miss ...

named her as a Fellow of the sixth class of the Kamalnayan Bajaj Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. In 2017, she won a Digital Women Award in the "Social Impact" category for her work with SFLC.in. In 2017, the

Open (Indian magazine) ''Open'' is an Indian English-language weekly magazine. It was launched on 2 April 2009 by the Open Media Network, the media venture of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group.

listed her as a Freedom Fighter and one of the emerging legal guardians of the Free Internet. She is also current member of code of Conduct Committee for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Kernel

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Choudhary, Mishi Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Columbia Law School alumni Delhi University alumni 20th-century Indian women lawyers 20th-century Indian lawyers 20th-century American women lawyers 20th-century American lawyers 21st-century Indian women lawyers 21st-century Indian lawyers 21st-century American women lawyers 21st-century American lawyers