Dr. Philippe Aigrain was trained as a mathematician and theoretical computer scientist, and holds a Doctorate and a "Habilitation ‡ Diriger les Recherches" qualification from University Paris 7. From 1972 to 1981, he worked in software engineering research labs of software companies. He was a research fellow at U.C. Berkeley in 1982. Since then, and before joining the European Commission in 1996, he headed research teams in the field of computer processing, indexing, retrieval and user interface for audiovisual media (video, music, still images). He is the author of more than 50 research and technology assessment papers.

He is presently CEO of Sopinspace, Society for Public Information Spaces, a company founded by him in 2004. Sopinspace develops free software and provides commercial services for the organisation of public debates and collaborative work over the Internet. In parallel, he is active as an analyst of the stakes of the information revolution and engaged in actions for the reform of intellectual rights regimes. This is part of a long commitment to the development of technical tools, processes and social environments that help everyone to be more creative, more capable or critical thinking and constructive exchanges with others. He has authored two books on the information commons and related policy issues: "Cause commune: l'information entre bien commun et propriètè", Fayard 2005 (translated in Italian and Arabic), and "Internet & Crèation: comment reconnaÓtre les Èchanges sur internet en financáant la crèation" (English translation in process). His books and numerous papers on the information commons, access to knowledge and intellectual rights are accessible under CC licenses on his blog.

Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Before joining the faculty at Harvard Law School, he was Joseph M. Field '55 Professor of Law at Yale. He writes about the Internet and the emergence of networked economy and society, as well as the organization of infrastructure, such as wireless communications. In the 1990s he played a role in characterizing the centrality of information commons to innovation, information production, and freedom in both its autonomy and democracy senses. In the 2000s, he worked more on the sources and economic and political significance of radically decentralized individual action and collaboration in the production of information, knowledge and culture. His work traverses a wide range of disciplines and sectors, and is taught in a variety of professional schools and academic departments. In real world applications, his work has been widely discussed in both the business sector and civil society. His books include The Wealth of Networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom (2006), which received the Don K. Price award from the American Political Science Association for best book on science, technology, and politics, the American Sociological Association's CITASA Book Award an outstanding book related to the sociology of communications or information technology, the Donald McGannon award for best book on social and ethical relevance in communications policy research, was named best business book about the future by Stategy & Business, and otherwise enjoyed the gentle breath of Fortuna. In civil society, Benkler's work was recognized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award in 2007, and the Public Knowledge IP3 Award in 2006. His articles include Overcoming Agoraphobia (1997/98, initiating the debate over spectrum commons); Commons as Neglected Factor of Information Production (1998) and Free as the Air to Common Use (1998, characterizing the role of the commons in information production and its relation to freedom); From Consumers to Users (2000, characterizing the need to preserve commons as a core policy goal, across all layers of the information environment); Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm (characterizing peer production as a basic phenomenon of the networked economy) and Sharing Nicely (2002, characterizing shareable goods and explaining sharing of material resources online). His work can be freely accessed at benkler.org.

Maurizio Borghi , Degree in Economics, second degree in Philosophy, PhD in Economic and Social History, is Research fellow at Bocconi University of Milan, where he teaches Cultural history and Philosophy. His recent research activity focuses particularly on intellectual property rights in historical and philosophical perspective. He is also developing research programs on history of philosophy, with special regards to phenomenology and hermeneutics, as member of a research group on translating Martin Heidegger's works in Italian. He has published a book on the history of copyright and of the book trade in Italy ( La manifattura del pensiero: Diritti d'autore e mercato delle lettere in Italia (1801-1865) , Franco Angeli: Milan 2003) and some articles and papers on related subjects.

Mario has a PhD in Economics from the University of Manchester and he has a BSc and an MSc in mechanical engineering from Politecnico di Torino.
He teaches Management of Innovation and Technology Strategy at undergraduate, master and postgraduate level and in the Alta Scuola Politecnica. Mario sits in the scientific committee of the PhD program in "Economics and Management of Technology" at Politecnico di Torino and University of Bergamo and of the PhD program in "Economics of Institutions and Creativity" at University of Torino. His main research interest is in the Economics and Management of Innovation. His numerous publications in international journals cover research and innovation management issues, technology policies and empirical studies on the determinants of innovative activity. He has been involved in several research projects and his research has attracted funds and sponsorships to Politecnico di Torino from several Institutions such as the European Commission, the Italian Ministry for Research, the Italian Ministry of Industry, the Italian Authority for Communications and several research foundations, private consultancy companies, banks and industry associations. Mario Calderini is the delegate for Public Policies of the Fondazione COTEC per l’Innovazione Tecnologica, under the Honorary Presidency of Giorgio Napolitano, President of the Italian Republic. He is the co-director of Fondazione Rosselli’s Laboratorio di Economia dell’Innovazione "Franco Momigliano" and has a permanent cooperation with Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli. He is currently a member of the Intellectual Property Rights Commission at Politecnico di Torino and a member of the Dean’s board for Politecnico’s Fourth Faculty of Management. Mario Calderini is also a member of the Scientific Committee of "Quaestio", the Lombardy Region System for Research and Technology Transfer Centres Evaluation, and sits in the permanent product liability working group established by the European Community in order to monitor the impact of Directive 85/374/CE on liability for defective products. In 2005 he joined the expert group of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) with the task of peer reviewing the UN’s World Investment Report 2005. In 2006 he was nominated by the Italian Delegation as an expert to the Administrative Council of the European Patent Office (EPO). In the recent past, he was a member of the National Physics of the Matter Institute International Evaluation Panel and the national representative in the European Commission's Board for Regional Technology Advisor Centre.

Luca De Biase is a journalist and writer. He is the founder and chief editor of Nòva, the science and technology crossplatform section at Il Sole 24 Ore. He is the president of Fondazione Ahref, which is meant to research and help improve the information ecosystem emerging in the social media. He is author of "Economia della felicità", "Il mago d'ebiz" and "In nome del popolo mondiale". He blogs at blog.debiase.com and lucadebiase.nova100.ilsole24ore.com. He edited with Giorgio Meletti "Bidone.com". He contributed to the project and implementation of various initiatives, such as Skillpass, ScienceXpress, I nonni raccontano, EquiLiber, Reporters Online. He teaches Journalism and social media at Iulm in Milan. He teaches Social media and international policy at Sciences Po, Paris.

Giulio De Petra received his degree in Economics from University of Siena, Italy. He worked in the service organization in BNL (Banca Nazionale del Lavoro), one of the top italian banks, as expert in software design methodologies and in database administration. Later, he moved to the consulting division of IPACRI (Istituto per l’Automazione della Casse di Risparmio Italiane), where he was in charge of the research activities and projects. It has been senior consultant for the RSO Institute and it was for several years ICT advisor for the major of the city of Rome. Later, he became executive manager in AIPA (Autorità per l’Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione) - public local administration division. After he became director general for eGovernment at the Prime Minister’s department of Public Administration where he promoted the first national plan for eGovernment. Afterwards he became general manager in CNIPA (Centro Nazionale per l’Innovazione della Pubblica Amministrazione) leading as a director the public local administration department. Giulio De Petra then became general executive manager for Innovation before for the Autonomous Region of Sardinia and later for the Calabria Region. It has been member of the Prime Minister’s Committee for the Statistical Information Assurance and he was vice president of ASSINTER (National association of the regional public administration companies working in the ICT field). Since 2010 he has been working at Informatica Trentina, as executive manager.
Giulio De Petra founded and supported many national associations working on political and social issues of technological innovation, including "ICT for Democracy","Network","The NetCentury – for a Free Knowledge Society".

Professor Dr. Josef Drexl, LLM, graduated from the University of Munich in 1996 and holds a Ph.D. degree (1990) and a habilitation degree of the same University, in addition to an LL.M. degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Josef Drexl worked as a law professor at the Universities of Würzburg and Munich from 1997 to 2006. In 2002, he became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition and Tax Law in Munich. In 2003, Professor Drexl was elected the first chair of the Academic Society for Competition Law (ASCOLA). He acted as a visiting professor at Oxford University and LUISS University (Rome). Professor Drexl is an expert in international and European competition law, intellectual property law, consumer law and WTO law.

Urs Gasser is the Executive Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He teaches at Harvard Law School, at the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and Fudan University School of Management (China). He is a visiting professor at KEIO University (Japan) and a Fellow at the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research.

Urs Gasser has written several books, is the co-author of "Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems“ (Basic Books, 2012, with John Palfrey) and Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives” (Basic Books, 2008, with John Palfrey) that has been translated into 10 languages (including Chinese), and has published over 70 articles in professional journals.

His research and teaching activities focus on information law and policy issues. Current projects, several of them in collaboration with leading research institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, explore policy and educational challenges for young Internet users, the regulation of digital technology (currently with focus on cloud computing), interoperability, information quality, the law’s impact on innovation and risk in the ICT space, and alternative governance systems. He graduated from the University of St. Gallen (J.D., S.J.D.) as well as Harvard Law School (LL.M.) and received several academic awards and prizes for his research.

Prof. Jean-Claude Guédon began his career at Glendon College (York University) in Toronto, Ontario in 1970 and has been a professor at the Université de Montréal since 1973, first in the Institut d'histoire et de sociopolitique des sciences, and, since 1987, in the Département de littérature comparée. He is a long-time member of the Internet Society serving as co-chair of the program committee in 1996, 1998 and 2000, and member of the same committee in 1997, 1999 and 2002.
In 1991, with Bill Reading and Walter Moser, he launched the first electronic scholarly journal in Canada: Surfaces. Between 1998 and 2003, he was Chair of the Advisory Board for CNSLP (Canadian National Site Licence Project, now known as CRKN (Canadian Research Knowledge network). From 2002 until 2006, he was a member of OSI's Information Program sub-board. Between 2003 and 2007, he was a member of the Advisory Board of eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries). In 2006 he was elected (until November 2008) Vice-President of the Canadian Society for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
He has advised numerous governmental bodies, including the Ministère de la Recherche (France) for their e-publication project in the humanities and the social sciences; the Agence de la francophonie for matters pertaining to new technologies; the Quebec Minister of Communication in charge of the information highway; and the Quebec Ministry of education for the integration of the new technologies into the curriculum. He regularly acts as expert for the European Commission. He is also on the editorial board of several journals, and his three books are all available in Italian.

Anna Masera graduated in History at Yale in 1983. In 1984 she was awarded a master degree in journalism from the Columbia University. In 1986 she started to work as journalist for “Italia Oggi”, an Italian daily newspaper. Then she worked for the press agency Reuters and later for Mondadori, writing for two monthly magazines: “Fortune Italia” and “Espansione”. In the meantime she was also a consultant for the talk show "Milano, Italia" of the Italian public broadcaster. She started to work for Panorama “life and style” section in 1994 when Internet started to gain widespread diffusion. Since then she is following the development of new media: first she founded “Panorama Web”, then she was hired by “La Stampa” in 1999 to launch their website. She is currently deputy editor and blogger for “LaStampa.it” and she also blogs on the “Guardian”.

1961-1969 Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Politecnico di Torino.
1970- Full Professor of Computer Science at Politecnico di Torino.
1970-1999 head of "Centro per l'Elaborazione Numerale dei Segnali" CNR.
1979-1985 director of the "Progetto Finalizzato Informatica", CNR.
1991-1996 scientific director of "Centro di Supercalcolo Piemonte".
He has published more than one hundred papers dealing with computer science. In particular, he investigated switching theory, hardware design, signal processing, speech analysis and synthesis, and pattern recognition.
He has coordinated many academic and industrial national research projects on computer science.
He is president of the Academy of Sciences of Torino.
In 2002 he was called by the Italian Minister of Technology to preside at a Commission entrusted with the task of promoting open source in the Italian Public Administration.

Charles Rothwell Nesson is the William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and of the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society. He is author of Evidence, with Murray and Green, and has participated in several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals. In 1971, Nesson defended Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers case. He was co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the case against W.R. Grace that was made into the film A Civil Action.
Nesson attended Harvard College as an undergraduate, and then Harvard Law School where he joined the list of only a handful of people in history to have graduated summa cum laude. Nesson was a law clerk to Justice John Marshall Harlan II on the United States Supreme Court, 1965 term. He then worked as a special assistant in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. His first case, White v. Crook, made race and gender-based jury selection in Alabama unconstitutional. Nesson joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1966, and was tenured in 1969.
He is "currently leading a project to reify university as a meta player in cyberspace, to legitimize and teach poker and the value of strategic poker thinking, and to advance restorative justice in Jamaica". In 2006 he taught CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion with Rebecca Nesson and Gene Koo. He teaches courses in the law and practice of Evidence (how to prove the "truth"), Trials in Second Life, and a reading group with Fern Nesson on Freedom.

Michelangelo Pistoletto was born in Biella in 1933. He began to exhibit his work in 1955 and in 1960 he had his first solo show at Galleria Galatea in Turin. An inquiry into self-portraiture characterizes his early work. In the two-year period 1961-1962 made the first Mirror Paintings, which directly include the viewer and real time in the work, and open up perspective, reversing the Renaissance perspective that had been closed by the twentieth-century avant-gardes. These works quickly brought Pistoletto international acclaim, leading, in the sixties, to one-man shows in important galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. The Mirror Paintings are the foundation of his subsequent artistic output and theoretical thought.
In 1965 and 1966 he produced a set of works entitled Minus Objects, considered fundamental to the birth of Arte Povera, an art movement of which Pistoletto was an animating force and a protagonist. In 1967 he began to work outside traditional exhibition spaces, with the first instances of that “creative collaboration” he developed over the following decades by bringing together artists from different disciplines and diverse sectors of society. In 1975-76 he presented a cycle of twelve consecutive exhibitions, Le Stanze, at Galleria Stein in Turin. This was the first of a series of complex, year-long works called “time continents”. Others are White Year (1989) and Happy Turtle (1992).
In 1978, in a show at Galleria Persano in Turin, Pistoletto defined two main directions his future artwork would take: Division and Multiplication of the Mirror and Art Takes On Religion. In the early eighties he made a series of sculptures in rigid polyurethane, translated into marble for his solo show in 1984 at Forte di Belvedere in Florence. From 1985 to 1989 he created the series of “dark” volumes called Art of Squalor. During the nineties, with Project Art and with the creation in Biella of Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto and the University of Ideas, he brought art into active relation with diverse spheres of society with the aim of inspiring and producing responsible social change. In 2003 he won the Venice Biennale’s Golden Lion for Lifelong Achievement. In 2004 the University of Turin awarded him a laurea honoris causa in Political Science. On that occasion the artist announced what has become the most recent phase of his work, Third Paradise. In 2007, in Jerusalem, he received the Wolf Foundation Prize in the Arts, “for his constantly inventive career as an artist, educator and activist whose restless intelligence has created prescient forms of art that contribute to fresh understanding of the world.”

Prof. David Post is currently the I. Herman Stern Professor of Law at the Beasley School of Law at Temple University, where he teaches intellectual property law and the law of cyberspace. He is also a Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Fellow of the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, an Adjunct Scholar at the Cato Institute, and a contributor to the influential Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Professor Post is the author of In Search of Jefferson’s Moose: Notes on the State of Cyberspace (Oxford, 2009) , a Jeffersonian view of Internet law and policy. He is also coauthor of Cyberlaw: Problems of Policy and Jurisprudence in the Information Age (West, 2007) , and numerous scholarly articles on intellectual property, the law of cyberspace, and complexity theory. He has been a regular columnist for the American Lawyer and InformationWeek, a commentator on the Lehrer News Hour, Court TV’s Supreme Court Preview, NPR’s All Things Considered, BBC’s World, and recently was featured in the PBS documentary The Supreme Court.

After receiving a Ph.D. in physical anthropology, he taught in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University before attending Georgetown Law Center, from which he graduated summa cum laude in 1986. After clerking with then Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, he spent 6 years at the Washington D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, after which he then clerked again for Justice Ginsburg during her first term at the Supreme Court (1993 - 1994), before joining the faculty of the Georgetown University Law Center (1994 – 1997) and then Temple University Law School (1997 – present). Professor Post's writings can be accessed online at www.davidpost.com

Stefano Quintarelli is a serial entrepreneur (and prolific blogger), who pioneered the commercial development of internet in Italy.
He graduated in IT science at the University of Milan. In 1989 he founded MI.NE.R.S. (Milano Network Researchers and Students), the student telecom association that developed the first e-mail independent system in Italy.
In 1994, he was one of the founder of I.NET, the first commercial ISP in Italy for professionals, that hosted the Milan Internet Exchange (MIX), the first and most important exchange point of ISP traffic in Italy, he also contributed to the birth of AIIP the Italian association of Internet Providers.
He was one of the founding members of: CLUSIT, Italian association for IT security; AIPSI, Italian association of professionals of IT security (Italian division of ISSA.org); Equiliber, Association for balanced information on technology innovation; VoIPex, consortium for interoperability, quality and transparency of IP services.
He has been a supporter of civic IT backing the first civic networks in Italy (e.g. RCM the civic network of Milan and ONDE - Online Desenzano). He promoted the birth of DMIN.IT, the forum on digital media development in Italy, coordinated by Leonardo Chiariglione (the president of MPEG).
He is a supporter of network neutrality and knowledge sharing and he sustained since the beginning the activities of "Condividi la Conoscenza", the conferences organized by sen. Fiorello Cortiana and in 2005 he introduced in Italy the network neutrality topic in a congress with Lawrence Lessig and in other occasions.
He is author of many books and papers on Internet published on the most important Italian newspapers and he is scientific coordinator of updating workshops on technological topics for the Italian finance community.
He chaired the Italian ISP association (AIIP) till January 2007, he is a member of the Programming committee of Federcomin (innovation services of the Italian federation of industry)
He has been awarded by "Corriere della Sera-Economia" as one of the 30 most innovative Italian entrepreneurs

Prof. Stefano Rodotà: Professor of Civil Law, University of Rome; Chairman of the Italian Data Protection Authority; former Chairman of the European Group of the Data Protection Authorities Chairman of the Commission on Genetic Testing and Counselling; Member of the European Group on Ethics in science and technologies, Member of the Convention drafting the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000); Former Member of the HUGO Ethics Committee (1997-2000); Member of the Ethics Committee of the National Research Council; Work in the field of the legal and social effects of scientific innovation (1972-2000); Important work in the field of bioethics (1989-2000); Author of several books and editor of a number of periodicals; Member of the Italian Parliament (1979-1994); Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies (1992); Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (1983-1994); Member of the European Commission's Group of Advisers on the Ethical Implications of Biotechnology (1994-1997); Member of the European Group on Ethics (since 1998); Chairman of the European Group of Authorities for the Protection of Privacy (1999-2000).

Dr. Sacha Wunsch-Vincent is Senior Economic Officer in the Office of the Chief Economist of the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva. Before joining the WIPO, he was Co-Leader of the Innovation Strategy at the Science, Technology and Industry Directorate of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Previously, he was a Swiss National Science Fellow at the Berkeley Centre for Law & Technology (University of California) and at the Institute for International Economics, in Washington, D.C.. He also worked as economist at the International Trade Center (UNCTAD&WTO). He publishes and works on newer generation trade and technology issues and serves as an advisor with a number of institutions such as the World Economic Forum, the UN ICT Task Force, and the World Bank. He teaches international trade at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences-Po) and at the World Bank Institute. Sacha holds a Masters of International Economics (MERIT, University of Maastricht) and a PhD in Economics (University of St. Gallen).