TACD IP Policy Committee

(Last updated Tuesday, 20 October 2009)

Amelia Andersdotter, Lisbon-MEP, Piratpartiet
Ann Chaitovitz
Aslam Raffee, software developer
Astrid Girardeau, Libération
Ben Clough, Director/Producer
Bob Jolliffe, Freedom to Innovate South Africa
Brook Baker, Northeastern University School of Law
C. Cay Wesnigk, OnlineFilm
David Hammerstein-Mintz
Dean Schramm, Producer
Ed Mierzwinski, US PIRG
Eddan Katz, EFF
Eddie Schwartz, Canadian Songwriter’s Association
Edouard Barreiro, UFC
Florent Latrive, Liberation
Fred von Lohmann, EFF
Gaelle Krikorian, Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux
Gerd Leonhard, Author, Media Futurist
Graham Taylor, OpenForum Europe
Hank Shocklee, Shocklee Entertainment
Hans-Marius Graasvold, Norwegian Consumer Council
Heather Joseph, SPARC
Hervé le Crosnier, CFEditions
Howard Weaver, journalist and author
James Love, KEI
Jean Cook, Future of Music Coalition
Jean-Pierre Laisné, OW2
Jérémie Zimmermann, La Quadrature du Net
Jeremy Malcolm, Consumers International
Jill Johnstone, Consumer Focus
Jim Killock, Open Rights Group
John Erickson, Sequoia Pharmaceuticals
Jonatha Brooke, singer/songwriter
Josh Silver, Free Press
Judit Rius, KEI
Julian Knott, TACD
Karsten Gerloff, FSF Europe
Khalil Elouardighi, Coaliton Plus
Kostas Rossoglou, BEUC
Laurence Van de Walle, Green Party
Luis Villarroel, Corporación Innovarte
Luke Upchurch, Consumers International
Malini Aisola, KEI
Manon Ress, KEI
Marcello Mustilli, aFACE
Marco Visalberghi, DocLabs
Michael Geist
Michelle Childs, MSF
Nicole Allen, US Student PIRG
Paul Levy, Public Citizen
Peter Eckersley, EFF
Peter Jenner, music manager and producer
Peter Wayner, author
Pia Raug, musician, composer, Danish Society for Jazz, Rock, and Folk Composers
Sherwin Siy, Public Knowledge
Sunil Abraham, CIS India
Thiru Balasubramaniam, KEI
Tim Hubbard, Sanger Institute
Tom Mcgrath, Consumers International
Valerie Peugeot, Vecam
Vera Franz, OSI
William New, IP Watch

Ann Chaitovitz

For 15 years, Ann has represented songwriters, publishers and recording artists in discussions on issues at the intersection of copyright, communications and technology. She is currently a consultant and was recently the Executive Director of Future of Music Coalition, a non-profit organization focused on creating a bright future for creators and listeners. Before joining FMC, Ann was an attorney-advisor specializing in domestic and international copyright law at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Prior to USPTO, Ann served as the National Director of Sound Recordings at the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). Prior to AFTRA, Ann worked as a staff attorney at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), where she conducted copyright litigation on behalf of songwriters and publishers.

Ann serves on the Board of Directors of the Alliance of Artists and Recording Companies (AARC), has served on the Board of Directors of SoundExchange, participated in the American Assembly on “Art, Technology, and Intellectual Property” and graduated in 2004’s Leadership Music class.

Aslam Raffee

Aslam Raffee is the Senior Advisor on Open Technologies for EMEA with Sun Microsystems, under the Global Communities group. Prior to this Aslam was the CIO of the Department of Science and Technology in the Government of South Africa, and an executive member of the Government IT Officers Council (GITOC), where he was chairperson of the GITOC Open Source and Open Standards working group.

Bob Jolliffe

Bob Jolliffe is a software developer and information politics activist.  He was a member of the South African government working group on open source software from 2003 to 2007.  This is the working group which drafted the South African FOSS policy.  He is also a founder of Freedom to Innovate South Africa, a civil society organisation dedicated to patent reform in South Africa.  He is actively involved in various open standards processes related to XML formats and is currently a member of the OASIS Open Document Format technical committee and the emerging working group around the SDMX HD standard, a format for aggregate health data.proposed by the World Health Organisation.  Bob has been living in Dublin for the past year where he continues to write free software as part of the global Health Information Systems Project, brews beer and grows vegetables on his allotment.

Brook Baker

Professor Baker is a Professor at Northeastern University School of Law and is involved in its Program on Human rights and the Global Economy. He is co-chair and policy analyst for Health GAP (Global Access Project) and is actively engaged in campaigns for Universal Access to treatment, prevention, and care for people living with HIV/AIDS, especially expanded and improved medical treatment. He has written and consulted extensively on intellectual property rights, trade, health financing and access to medicines, including with the African Union, ASEAN, Venezuela, CARICOM, Thailand, DfID, the World Health Organization, the Millennium Development Goals Project and others. He works on policy issues concerning the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the U.S. PEPFAR Program, and how those priority disease initiatives might contribute more broadly to improving health care delivery in developing countries. He is also active in a working group challenging IMF macroeconomic policies that restrict increased government and donor spending on health and education in developing countries.

C. Cay Wesnigk

C. Cay Wesnigk has worked as film director, writer and producer in different genres since 1987.
In 2000 together with over 120 Filmmakers/producers he founded the ONLINEFILM AG (www.onlinefilm.org) to find solutions for small independent film producers to make use of digital technologies and use the Internet for distribution and production of films on a collectively owned marketplace.

Wesnigk is chairman of the board of VG Bild-Kunst (www.bild-kunst.de), Germany’s collecting agency for audiovisual Artists; a member of the board of AGDOK (www.agdok.de), a German alliance of independent film producers; and EDN, the European Documentary Network (www.edn.dk).

David Hamerstein-Mintz

As Member of the European Parliament from 2004-2009 David Hammerstein-Mintz was a full member of the powerful Committee of Industry, Energy and Research, and was also on the Foreign Affairs and Petitions Committees.  He has worked extensively on issues related to knowledge management, intellectual property and Internet governance. He has played a very important role in the parliamentary and social debates on copyright extension, IPRED 2 (criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights), the successful campaign against software patents, the defense of consumer rights in roaming phone rates, issues related to net neutrality, IP and privacy in the Telecom Package and Universal Services, the promotion of sharing and flows of knowledge in the EU’s Seventh Framework for Research, the patentability of life-forms and bio-piracy, science for green agriculture and issues concerning clean technology transfer to the South in the fight against climate change, among other issues. He spearheaded the “Open Parliament” campaign to open the European Parliament to open-source software.  He has published many articles, press releases and position papers concerning all of these questions.

Dean Schramm

Dean Schramm has been an agent representing writers, directors and producers for the past 14 years and is currently also a manager/producer as the principal of his own entertainment company, The Schramm Group.  Schramm recently put together and Executive Produced the award winning documentary feature film, “Darfur Now” released theatrically in 2007 by Warner Independent Pictures about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.  Other film projects Schramm helped to set up include the opening premier of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, “My First Mister” starring Albert Brooks and Leelee Sobieski and directed by Christine Lahti; David Mamet’s “Edmond” starring William H. Macy and Julia Stiles; and the blockbuster feature film “Nacho Libre” starring Jack Black and released by Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Films.  In television, Schramm has put writers on such shows as “CSI:Miami,” “Nip/Tuck,” “NCIS,” “In Plain Sight” and “The Secret Lives of American Teenagers.”

Ed Mierzwinski

Ed Mierzwinski has been a consumer advocate in the Washington, D.C. federation of State Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG) since 1989. PIRGs are non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy groups with over 500,000 members around the United States. He often testifies before Congress and speaks at events, especially against the growing threat of federal preemption of stronger state health and safety laws. Mr. Mierzwinski is often quoted in the national press, has been a guest on numerous shows including NBC Today, ABC Good Morning America, ABC Nightline, CNN Crossfire and NPR Talk of the Nation, and has been profiled in the New York Times. He is a founding member of the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue and represents U.S. PIRG on the TACD Steering Committee. He is a recipient of the Consumer Federation of America Esther Peterson Consumer Service Award (2006) and Privacy International’s Brandeis Award (2003). He blogs at uspirg.org/consumer.

Eddan Katz

Eddan Katz is the International Affairs Director and is responsible for managing EFF’s international activities, specializing in Access to Knowledge (A2K) and digital rights. Before EFF, Eddan was the Executive Director of the Yale Information Society Project and Lecturer-in-Law at Yale Law School. He taught and writes in the areas of cyberlaw, intellectual property, telecommunications, and bioethics. Eddan received his bachelors degree in philosophy from Yale; and his law degree from UC, Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, where he was awarded the Sax Prize for his work with the Samuelson Law, Technology, & Public Policy Clinic.

Eddie Schwartz

Eddie Schwartz is a composer, producer, artist and President of the Songwriters Association of Canada. As a songwriter, he has had some two hundred songs recorded and performed, perhaps the best known being “Hit Me with your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar. His worldwide sales are currently in excess of 65 million recordings. Eddie has won numerous music industry awards including multiple Junos, BMI awards and SOCAN awards, and SOCAN’s prestigious William Harold Moon award. He is also an artist in his own right and has released four albums which have garnered international acclaim and top 30 singles in the United States. In addition, he has served for many years on a number of boards including the Songwriters Association of Canada, SOCAN, CARAS and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and is a graduate of the prestigious Leadership Music program in Nashville.

Edouard Barreiro

Edouard Barreiro is the chief ICT officer at UFC, where he is in charge of all issues relative to IP in the creative field. He set up and led UFC’s campaign against graduated response (http://www.ca-va-couper.fr/). He is also in charge of the creation and promotion of UFC propositions, including catalogue regulation and collective licensing. He is also the co-founder of the “Creation in the Public Interest” platform that gathers consumers and artists (music and cinema) around the proposition of a collective license.

Florent Latrive

Florent Latrive, 37, is a journalist for the French daily newspaper Liberation, where he’s written about the so-called “intellectual property” matters and immaterial economics for 8 years. He’s the author of Du bon usage de la piraterie (La Découverte, 2008) and the co-editor of Libres enfants du savoir numérique (L’Eclat, 2000). He is right now in charge of the audio and video part of Liberation’s website and still a free activist.

Fred von Lohmann

Fred von Lohmann is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, specializing in intellectual property matters. In that role, he has represented programmers, technology innovators, and individuals in a variety of copyright and trademark litigation, including MGM v. Grokster, decided by the Supreme Court in 2005. He is also involved in EFF’s efforts to educate policy-makers regarding the proper balance between intellectual property protection and the public interest in fair use, free expression, and innovation. Before joining EFF, Fred was a visiting researcher with the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and an associate with the international law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP. He has appeared on CNN, CNBC, ABC’s Good Morning America, and Fox News O’Reilly Factor and has been widely quoted in a variety of national publications. Fred has an A.B. from Stanford University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Gaëlle Krikorian

Gaëlle Krikorian is currently writing a PhD in Sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. For the past few years, she has conducted research on the way health issues are taken into account during the negotiation of IP in Free Trade Agreements. She is concentrating mainly on agreements between the US and developing countries––primarily Morocco and Thailand. Before that she was involved for almost 10 years with Act Up-Paris, an organization fighting HIV/AIDS. She was particularly active on the issue of access to medicines in developing countries. She has also worked as a consultant on IP and health issues with organizations in France, Morocco, the US, and Malaysia, and is currently a member of the consultative board AC27 at the National research agency on HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis (ANRS), dedicated to socio-economical research in developing countries.  She is also involved in several additional projects––one on Access to Knowledge mobilizations, another one on the immigration policy in France––and is collaborating to the magazine Vacarme.

Gerd Leonhard

The Wall Street Journal calls Gerd ‘one of the leading media futurists in the world’. He is the Co-Author of the influential book The Future of Music, as well as the author of Music2.0, “The End of Control” essays and of Open is King: Stories from the Future of Media. Gerd’s work focuses on the Future of Media, Content, Technology, Business, Communications and Culture, and he is considered a leading expert on topics such as Web/Media 2.0, social networking and social media, cultural changes due to disruption by new technologies, copyright vs. technology issues, online content commerce models, media convergence, mobile entertainment, entrepreneurship, the future of advertising and branding, future planning, digital content strategies and next-generation business models. Gerd is also a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (London), and resides in Basel, Switzerland.

Hank Shocklee

As a DJ, producer, composer and record company executive, Hank Shocklee has been a force behind some of the most significant music and film projects of the last two decades including Public Enemy, Ice Cube, Mary J. Blige, LL Cool J, Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing and countless others.

As president of his new media company Shocklee Entertainment and of the online creative network Shocklee.com, Shocklee produces and collaborates on events and initiatives such as the Shocklee Innertainment Panel Series for Remix Magazine, The Art of Record Production Conference, The Ladies On The Mic network for Women in Entertainment, The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music at NYU, The Red Bull Music Academy, Tokion’s Creativity Now Conference and The Future of Music Coalition.

Shocklee has garnered a collection of Platinum and Multi-Platinum albums as well as 14 Grammy Nominations and numerous Soul Train Awards. He has also been the recipient of a Sony Innovators Award and an Apex Creative Engineer Award. Shocklee has also been named the Source Magazine’s Producer of the year twice during his career.

Hans-Marius Graasvold

Hans-Marius Graasvold is assistant director of the Consumer Council of Norway, and head of digital media and legal affairs. From 2002-2007 he worked with the Norwegian non-fiction writers and translators association, one of Europe’s largest writers unions. During the same period, he worked with an Oslo based law firm specializing in IP and privacy law. From 2005-2007 he was board member of the Clara Association, established by key Norwegian rights management organisations, providing web based information about rights clearance for copyright-protected material in Norway.

Mr. Graasvold has worked as part time IP lecturer and external examiner at the University of Oslo. He has published books and articles on copyright, publishing agreements and legal issues relating to digital media.

Heather Joseph

Heather Joseph currently serves as the director of SPARC, where she is responsible for SPARC’s overall program development. She has spent the last 16 years in scholarly publishing, working for both nonprofit and commercial publishers. She began her scholarly publishing at the American Astronomical Society, where she helped create one of the first fully electronic journals. She also helped to launch the electronic version of the Journal of Neuroscience, and later joined the staff of the American Society for Cell Biology, where she developed a system to peer review and publish multimedia content in the journal Molecular Biology of the Cell. She was pleased to have this journal earn the distinction of becoming the first journal to commit its full content to PubMed Central, and currently serves on the National Advisory Committee for this initiative.

Hervé Le Crosnier

Hervé Le Crosnier is a senior lecturer at the University of Caen, where he has taught courses on Internet technologies since 1995. His research concentrates mainly on the impact of Internet development on society and the building of the new digital commons.

In his previous position as a library curator, he created the BIBLIO-FR mailing list, which brought together French-speaking librarians, and book and information professionals. He is also a multimedia publisher and founded C&F éditions publishing house.

Howard Weaver

Howard Weaver is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor, and former Vice President for News in the McClatchy newspaper chain. He began his career with the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska, where he wrote the stories for which the paper won the 1976 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service, and was editor and a lead writer on the project for which the paper again won the prize in 1989. In 1995 he was named the assistant to the president for new media strategies at McClatchy Newspapers, where he advised senior management at the company on digital publishing, the internet and other new media issues. He later went on to serve as editor of the editorial pages and Vice President for News. From 1990-1994 he was co-chair of the international association of northern editors, the Northern News Service. In 1998 he was named by an Alaska Public Radio Network survey as one of the 40 most influential Alaskans in the state’s first 40 years of history.

James Love

Mr. Love is the Director of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI). Mr. Love is also the U.S. co-chair of the Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) Intellectual Property Policy Committee, chair of Essential Inventions, an advisor to the X-Prize Foundation on a prize for TB diagnostics, and a member of the UNITAID Expert Group on Patent Pools, the MSF Working Group on Intellectual Property, the Stop-TB Partnership working group on new drug development, and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards. He advises UN agencies, national governments, international and regional intergovernmental organizations and public health NGOs, and is the author of a number of articles and monographs on innovation and intellectual property rights. In 2006, Knowledge Ecology International received a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.

Jean Cook

Jean Cook is a musician, producer and Interim Executive Director of Future of Music Coalition (FMC), a U.S.-based NGO that works to improve the lives of musicians through research, education and advocacy on policy issues that directly impact the ability of musicians to make a living and reach audiences.  She is a founder and director of Anti Social Music, a New York-based new music collective, and currently records and tours with Ida/Elizabeth Mitchell, Jon Langford, and Beauty Pill.  Jean’s administrative background includes working as a publicist and curator for Washington Performing Arts Society, producing and hosting radio programs for 89.9 WKCR-FM, New York, and producing dozens of new music performance projects including a multimedia DIY opera called The Nitrate Hymnal. In 2004 Jean worked for Air Traffic Control, a political action group helping musicians to be more effective in the 2004 presidential election cycle.  She joined FMC in 2005.

Jean-Pierre Laisné

Open Source Strategy Manager for BULL S.A., Jean-Pierre Laisné is Chairman of OW2 (www.ow2.org , previously known as ObjectWeb), a consortium composed of leading Industry players from Europe, China, Brazil and USA joining efforts to produce Free/Libre Open Source Middleware. Laisné is also involved in Qualipso about trustworthy FLOSS (qualipso.org) and is leading the activities around Qualipso Network of Competence Centres in Europe, Brazil, China and Japan. President of the first edition of Open World Forum (openworldforum.org), Laisné is the initiator and coordinator of a prospective study about FLOSS named 2020 FLOSS Roadmap and updated on a yearly basis (2020flossroadmap.org). In 2000 Laisné was CEO of Linbox, one of the first European start up specialized in providing easy to install, simple to manage and inexpensive to maintain network computing solutions based on Linux and virtualisation. Working professionally on FLOSS since early nineties, Laisné co-founded of AFUL (French Speaking Linux Users’ Association), an organisation lobbying for Linux and Free Software expansion. Laisné has more than 25 years of experience responsible for the definition, organization and implementation of Information Systems in different sectors, such as insurance and industry, all around the world. His professional experience is key to bring FLOSS to the enterprise and his numerous contributions to studies and conferences makes Jean-Pierre Laisné one of the few renowned experts world wide.

Jérémie Zimmermann

Jérémie Zimmermann is the co-founder and spokesperson for the citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net. He specializes in the collision between Internet and legislation.

Jeremy Malcolm

Jeremy Malcolm works for Consumers International in its Asia-Pacific office in Kuala Lumpur, where he coordinates its projects on Access to Knowledge (A2K) and other issues of communications rights and media justice. Prior to this position Jeremy was an information technology and intellectual property lawyer, admitted to practice in Australia and New York. Jeremy completed his PhD thesis in Law at Murdoch University in 2008 which was the first doctoral examination of the Internet Governance Forum. His hobbies include open source software development.

Jill Johnstone

Jill Johnstone is an economist who, initially as a Senior Policy Officer and then Director of Policy, worked at the National Consumer Council (NCC) from 1981 to 2008. Prior to this, Jill worked in industry for a major trade association.

At NCC, Jill worked on a wide range of policy issues including trade, competition and agriculture. In 1999, she was seconded to the Performance and Innovation Unit of the Cabinet Office as part of their international trade project team.

As Director of Policy at NCC, Jill oversaw work across the realms of public services, open markets, disadvantage and sustainability and led on European and international policy advocacy work for the National Consumer Council. She represented Consumers International and the European Consumer Organisation, BEUC, on many occasions including leading the Consumers International delegation to the World Trade Organisation Ministerial meeting in 2003.

Since October 2008 Jill has been Director of the International Programme Team at Consumer Focus where she leads its European and international policy advocacy programme. Jill continues to work directly on policy, most notably on consumers, innovation and intellectual property and is currently the European co-chair of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue Intellectual Property Policy Committee.

Jim Killock

Jim Killock is Executive Director of the Open Rights Group.  Jim joined the ORG earlier in 2009 from the Green Party, where he was External Communications Co-ordinator.

Jim was a leading figure in the campaign to elect the Green Party’s first party leader, Caroline Lucas MEP. He coordinated their successful “Census Alert” campaign, which prevented the census data of UK citizens from being handled by U.S. arms company Lockheed Martin. He also promoted campaigns on open source and other copyright and patent reform issues.

John Erickson

John Erickson, Ph.D., CSO, is a recognized leader in the field of drug discovery. He co-founded Sequoia Pharmaceuticals and the Institute for Global Therapeutics in December 2001 to develop marketable therapeutic solutions to the urgent and growing threat to public health posed by drug-resistant viral, bacterial and fungal diseases, with an initial emphasis on HIV/AIDS. Dr. Erickson has previously spearheaded innovative drug discovery programs in the pharmaceutical, government and biotechnology sectors that have resulted in the development of two drugs, Ritonavir and Lopinavir at Abbott Laboratories, and of TMC-114, now JNJ’s Prezista(R). Dr. Erickson has authored or co-authored over 140 scientific publications, and is a co-inventor on over twenty (20) patents in the field of drug discovery. His research has spawned numerous drug discovery applications and spans therapeutic markets from HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases to cancer, and other life-threatening diseases.

Jonatha Brooke

Jonatha Brooke has been writing songs, making records and touring since her early days in Boston with her band “The Story”, releasing 2 albums on Elektra Records, “Grace in Gravity” and “The Angel in the House.”

In 1995 she released her first of 2 solo albums on MCA/Univeral, “Plumb,” followed by  “ten cent wings” in 1997.  In 1999 she started her own label, BAD DOG RECORDS, and has since release 6 albums on her own label. Her latest album “The Works” combines previously un- heard, unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics with her own music and arrangements. Brooke has also written songs for three Disney movies, has had songs included in many tv shows, and wrote the theme song for the latest Joss Whedon series, DOLLHOUSE.

Jonatha has been a very vocal and active supporter of Artists’ Rights. She has testified before the US Congress and the US Copyright Board, participated in various Future of Music Coalition panel discussions, and has appeared on radio programs and interviews in the press to discuss Artists’ Rights.

Josh Silver

Josh Silver oversees all programs, campaigns, fundraising and special projects for Free Press. Josh, who co-founded Free Press in 2002 to engage the American public in media policy, speaks and publishes widely on media and technology issues. Josh was previously campaign manager for the successful Clean Elections in Arizona ballot initiative; director of development for the cultural arm of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; and director of an international youth exchange program. Josh has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and featured in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Salon, C-SPAN and NPR. He blogs regularly at The Huffington Post.

Judit Rius

Ms. Rius works in the Washington, DC office of KEI on access to medicines and access to knowledge issues. Her projects include providing technical assistance to developing countries on intellectual property law and encouraging the collective management of intellectual property rights in essential medical technologies with the creation of patent pools. Ms. Rius is a contributing editor for Knowledge Ecology Studies, and serves in several NGO and publications advisory councils.

Prior to her present position, Ms. Rius worked at the legal department of an international pharmaceutical company. She has also worked for Intermon-Oxfam Spain, been a legal intern at Electronic Frontier Foundation and collaborated with the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

Ms. Rius received a Licenciatura en Derecho (JD equivalent) and a Master’s Degree in International Studies from Pompeu Fabra University. In January 2006, she graduated from Stanford Law School with an LLM in Law, Science and Technology.

Karsten Gerloff

Karsten Gerloff is the President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, a leading non-profit organisation dedicated to the advancement of and education on Free Software. With a long-term vision, he focuses on policy and strategic aspects of Free Software, working at the forefront of a broad push for modernisation in national and international systems and practices of the management of copyright and patents.

With a background in cultural sciences, Karsten has worked as a researcher in the Collaborative Creativity Group at the United Nations University’s MERIT institute (UNU-MERIT) in Maastricht, The Netherlands. There, he studied the use of Free Software as a tool for social and economic development. He has published a number of case studies on the use of Free Software in the European public sector.

Kostas Rossoglou

Kostas Rossoglou is a Greek qualified lawyer, and member of the bar of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Kostas holds the position of legal officer at BEUC. He has been working at BEUC’s Legal Department since February 2009. Kostas is an IPR expert, focusing mainly on copyright and IPR enforcement. He has been working on a number of EU policy developments, including online content, copyright term extension, copyright levies, counterfeiting online and copyright enforcement. He also leads the team on Group Actions and is a member of the team on consumers’ rights in the digital environment.

Kostas holds a Law degree in Law (University of Thessaloniki, Greece) as well as a master’s degree in European Law (Centre Européen Universitaire, University of Nancy, France).

Kostas has been working in Brussels since 2005, first as a stagiaire in the European Commission, and later in an international law firm and EU Affairs consultancy, providing advice to industry on EU law and EU policy developments.

He has also worked as a lawyer in Greece and Malta. A Greek native speaker, he is fluent in English, French and Spanish, with basic knowledge of Russian.

Laurence Van de Walle

Laurence Van de Walle holds a degree in Chinese studies and international relations. She has been working for 10 years as an advisor to the Greens in the European Parliament on IT and Research Policy. She has followed all major dossiers that come accross the European Parliament in this field since then, such as the Telecom Packages, the software patents directive, IPRED 1 & 2, and the Frawework Programmes for Research.

Luis Villarroel

Luis Villarroel is the Director of Research of the Latinamerican Center for Intellectual Property Research for Development (INNOVARTE). He has J.D in Law by the University of Chile, and LL.M. by the Washington College of Law, American University. He previously was the intellectual property adviser for the Ministry of Education of Chile, and a Judge of the Industrial Property Court of Chile. Has had extense experience in international negotiation of intellectual property chapters of free trade agreements. In 2008 he was elected Vice Chair of the WIPO Copyright Standing Comitee for that year. Currently he is a resource person for the IFLA Copyright and Legal Matter Committee and a consultant for the Ministry of Education of Uruguay for Copyright Law reform.  Mr. Villarroel also teaches intellectual property at the Finish Terrea University of Chile.

Malini Aisola

Malini Aisola is a senior research associate at KEI’s DC office. She participates in the United Nations Internet Governance Forum and works on openness, competition and consumer rights issues related to information technology. She is also involved with KEI’s activities in intellectual property policy, innovation in public health, and access to knowledge. Ms. Aisola is also an editor of Knowledge Ecology Studies, an open journal.

She studied clinical psychology in her hometown, Delhi, the University of Illinois and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she assessed and investigated psycopathy in maximum-security prisoners.

Manon Ress

Dr. Ress is Director of Information Society Projects at Knowledge Ecology International. She is also managing editor of Knowledge Ecology Studies, an open peer reviewed journal that is published on the Internet. She is an active participant at numerous multilateral and regional forums that discuss intellectual property rights, innovation and related topics. She is active in the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) policy committees on intellectual property and information society, and has served as an adviser, expert or consultant to organizations as diverse as the Wikipedia Foundation and Electronic Information for Libraries (eIFL). Dr. Ress’ work has focused on the protection on consumer and user rights in intellectual property norm setting, open standards, open access publishing, the development of open access user generated databases, and other topics.

Marcello Mustilli

Marcello Mustilli is a lawyer specialized in art and entertainment law and a partner at the law firm of “BLM (Bellettini, Lazzareschi, Mustilli)” (www.blmius.com).  After earning a J.D. cum laude at the University of Rome in 1996 he received an LLM in international copyright and trade law at King’s College London in 2002 and attended other specialization courses in international copyright.  He has been a member of the Italian Bar since 1999 and of other associations including the International Bar Association, International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property and International Association of Entertainment Lawyers. His clients mostly include authors and producers of audiovisual works as well as cultural institutions. Before founding his own firm, he practiced in major legal firms in Italy and the U.S. His main areas of practice include copyright law, film production and distribution, contract and litigation. He is general counsel to the Italian Association of Independent Documentary Filmmakers (Doc/It) and one of the founders of the project A FACE.

Marco Visalberghi

Marco Visalberghi has worked as a producer and director since 1969. From 1980 to the present he has collaborated with RAI’s flagship science magazine series Superquark. In 1999 he founded DocLab Productions, where he currently acts as Managing Director. His aim was to bring the Italian documentary into the International market, and over the last years he has worked regularly with well-known broadcasters such as Discovery Channel, National Geographic, NOVA/WGBH, Nature-WNET, WDR in Germany, NHK in Japan, the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, France 3 and France 5, and ARTE in France. His passion for his work leads him to constantly seek the combination of technical innovation, creative talent and good storytelling. He has been for 6 years vice president of DOC IT (the Italian Documentaries Association) and now he is an active member  and co-founder of aFACE (Association for Fair Audiovisual Copyright in Europe) promoting the freedom of expression and speech in the audiovisual domain.

Michael Geist

Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. Dr. Geist has written numerous academic articles and government reports on the Internet and law and was a member of Canada’s National Task Force on Spam. He is an internationally syndicated columnist on technology law issues, the editor of In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law, the editor of several monthly technology law publications, and the author of a popular blog on Internet and intellectual property law issues. Dr. Geist serves on the Privacy Commissioner of Canada’s Expert Advisory Board, on the Canadian Digital Information Strategy’s Review Panel, and on the Information Program Sub-Board of the Open Society Institute. He has received numerous awards for his work including the Les Fowlie Award for Intellectual Freedom from the Ontario Library Association in 2009, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer Award in 2008, and Canarie’s IWAY Public Leadership Award for his contribution to the development of the Internet in Canada.

Michelle Childs

Michelle Childs is Director of Policy Advocacy at the Campaign for Essential Medicines at MSF. Previously she was Head of European Affairs at Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), an organisation that searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources. Whilst at KEI Michelle worked with NGOs throughout Europe on Access to Medicine and Access to Knowledge issues and lobbied the European and UN institutions. She was a member of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue working group on IP, adviser to the Stop AIDS Campaign drug pricing group and CEO of Essential Inventions. Prior to that post, Michelle was Head of Policy Research and Analysis at the Consumers’ Association UK, the largest member driven consumer group in Europe. She has also been a personal advisor to the Director General of the Office of Fair Trading UK, a consultant to the Hong Kong Telecoms Regulator and a policy adviser to the UK Telecoms Regulator. She has also worked as a lawyer (solicitor) in the Commercial Litigation Department of a London law firm handling a range of disputes. She holds a law degree LLB (Hons).

Nicole Allen

Nicole Allen is the director of the Student PIRGs’ Make Textbooks Affordable campaign. She began her career in higher education advocacy as a student at the University of Puget Sound, where she led a statewide effort to stop a $12 billion cut to federal student aid programs. Following her graduation with a degree in Philosophy, Nicole worked as a student organizer for WashPIRG, during which time she played a key role in passing Washington state’s landmark textbook price-disclosure law. In her current role, Nicole spearheads research, advocacy and program development for Make Textbooks Affordable, which is run on over 100 campuses nationwide.

Paul Levy

Paul Alan Levy has been an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group since 1977. Mr. Levy has argued scores of cases in United States Court of Appeals (three en banc). Moreover, he has argued four cases in Supreme Court of the United States, as well as writing briefs for parties in seven other cases. Mr. Levy has specialized more recently in free speech issues arising on the Internet. He has litigated cases in state and federal courts throughout the country about the identification of anonymous Internet speakers. His Internet practice also includes the defense of trademark and copyright claims brought as a means of suppressing critical web sites. For several years, Mr. Levy chaired subcommittees on domain name and keyword advertising litigation of the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section.

Peter Eckersley

Peter Eckersley is a Staff Technologist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He keeps his eyes peeled for technologies that, by accident or design, pose a risk to computer users’ freedoms and then looks for ways to fix them. He explains gadgets to lawyers, and lawyers to gadgets. His doctoral research at the University of Melbourne focused on the practicality and desirability of using “virtual market” public funding systems to legalize P2P file sharing and similar distribution tools while still paying authors and artists for their work.  He is also interested in related questions about the design of institutions to support free software development.

Peter Jenner

After gaining a First Class Honours Degree in Economics at Cambridge University, Peter Jenner became a Lecturer at the London School of Economics at the tender age of twenty-one. His career in academia lasted for four years, after which he left to devote his attention to managing an up-and-coming Pink Floyd. After their time with the Floyd was over, Peter and his business partner Andrew King put on a series of free concerts in London’s Hyde Park which culminated with The Rolling Stones in 1969. Now, after more than forty years in the music business, the list of clients he has worked with reads like a Who’s Who of musical successes: he has managed T Rex (fronted by Marc Bolan), Ian Dury, Roy Harper, The Clash, Robyn Hitchcock, Eddi Reader, Baaba Maal and others. Peter continues to manage the career of Billy Bragg and in 2006 was the co-author of the well received Music Tank report “Beyond the Soundbytes.” He is also the President Emeritus of the IMMF, a director of the UK MMF (Music Managers’ Forum), and has many other projects on the go.

Peter Wayner

Peter Wayner is the author of 15 books and numerous articles on technology and its place in society. Many of his books revolve around how to balance security and privacy with the need for ubiquitous connectivity. His title Disappearing Cryptography was one of the first book-length treatments of steganography and  Translucent Databases explored the best practices for building websites that do useful, personalized tasks without holding any useful, personal information. He writes frequently for the New York Times and InfoWorld. In the past, he’s taught courses in the computer science departments of Cornell, Georgetown and Dartmouth.

Pia Raug

Pia Raug is a Danish singer, performer, composer, lyricist and author. She has released many albums and books since 1978. From 1989 until 2007 she served as Author Director of the board of KODA, the Danish Authors’ Rights Society. From 1996 to 2007 she was Vice-Chairman of DJBFA, the Danish non-classical composers’ guild, representing Danish composers of jazz, rock, folk, rap and electronica. From 2003 until 2007 she was also President of CIAM (the International Council of Authors of Music) within CISAC, the International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies; in this position she represented 2 million composers of all genres globally. She is presently acting Secretary General of ECA, the European Council of Artists, which represents about 220,000 artists of all disciplines in 25 European countries. She has worked extensively in Brussels since the 2005 Recommendation on Online Distribution of Music, informing Parliamentarians of the necessity to safeguard European creative rights against “Global market, corporate business group-think” in a new and digitized world. Since August 2008/March 2009 she has served as Chair of DJBFA, representing its 1,200 composer members. In 2008 she joined the KODA board again and is presently Vice Chair.

Sherwin Siy

Sherwin Siy is Deputy Legal Director and the Kahle/Austin Promise Fellow at Public Knowledge, where he focuses on emerging copyright issues and international effects on IP and technology policy. Before joining PK, he served as Staff Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, working on consumer and communications issues. Sherwin received his JD, with a Certificate in Law and Technology, from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law.

Sunil Abraham

Sunil Abraham is the Executive Director at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India. The CIS (cis-india.org) aims to critically engage with concerns of digital pluralism, public accountability and pedagogic practices, in the field of Internet and Society, with particular emphasis on South-South dialogue and exchange. Sunil is a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti (mahiti.org) in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. He was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to ‘explore the democratic potential of the Internet’. He was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellow in 2003.  Between June 2004 and June 2007, Sunil also managed the International Open Source Network (iosn.net) a project of United Nations Development Programme’s Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Thiru Balasubramaniam

Thiru Balasubramaniam is the Geneva representative for Knowledge Ecology International. His work spans from processes such as the WIPO Development Agenda and other WIPO processes, to the WHO Intergovernmental Working Group in Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (IGWG), through to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) TRIPS and public health debate as well as the broader access to knowledge (A2K) movement issues.

Prior to his post as KEI’s Geneva Representative, Mr. Balasubramaniam worked at Health Action International in Colombo and at the World Health Organization in Geneva as a technical officer in the Department of Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy dealing with access to medicines and intellectual property. During his first year at WHO, he was a Global Health Leadership Fellow, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the United Nations Foundation. He began his career with CPTech working on issues related to health care and intellectual property.

Mr. Balasubramaniam, who is a Sri Lankan national, holds B.A. degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania, United States of America.

Tim Hubbard

Tim Hubbard is responsible for the informatics division of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, which is at the vanguard of providing analyses and access to genome and genetic data, particularly of humans. He is joint PI of the Ensembl genome annotation project, the world’s leading database and access point for the human genome sequence. The Institute was responsible for determining a third of the human genome sequence and with the Wellcome Trust led the policy of immediate release of sequence data into the public domain.
He is also actively involved in government, NGO and industry discussions regarding intellectual property, innovation and public health. He was one of the architects of the R&D Treaty proposal, which would provide a framework for supporting worldwide healthcare research and development in a sustainable way, at the same time as addressing the issue of access to essential medicines.

Valérie Peugeot

Valérie Peugeot is the president of Vecam (www.vecam.org), a French non profit organisation which since 1995 has been involved with social and policy issues related to information and communication technologies.

Recently she has been involved with the preparation of the first World Forum on Science and Democracy (WFSD), which took place in Belem (Brazil) in January 2009. Videos from the WFSD can be found at http://vecam.org/rubrique122.html .

She has been the editor of two books: one on intellectual property and development (www.vecam.org/rubrique97.html), and another called Word Matters – Multicultural Perspectives on Information Societies (www.vecam.org/article698.html?lang=en).

She is also involved in Batik International (www.batik-international.org), a French NGO developing projects at the international level in favour of employment, professional training, and capacity building. Professionally, she is a senior consultant at Sofrecom (www.sofrecom.com), specializing in emerging technologies.

William New

William New is the Editor-in-Chief of IP-Watch, a non-profit news service based in Geneva. He has spent over a decade covering most major international intellectual property policy developments; prior to his term at IP-Watch, he was a senior writer and editor for the National Journal Group in Washington, a senior reporter at Inside U.S. Trade, and managing editor of Americas Trade. Mr. New has covered numerous international fora, including WIPO, WHO, ITC, UNCTAD and the WTO. His coverage has focused on global intellectual property concerns in areas such as international trade, IPR enforcement, as well as information and communications areas such as global internet governance, open source, digital rights management, and internet domain names.