Felipe Rodriquez
Felipe Rodriquez-Svensson. Born 1969 in Amsterdam. Hacker and co-founder of xs4all internet provider.
As co-founder of the Dutch Internet service provider XS4ALL, he has been at the center of the legal debate over censorship and Internet service provider issues in Europe and the world. Co-founded XS4ALL in 1993, and acted as its CEO until 1997. In his role as CEO, he was involved in a number of high-profile disputes concerning Internet politics. He took a stand in favor of protecting online civil liberties concerning material hosted on XS4ALL's server, and the successive court cases shaped the legal debate in the Netherlands on ISP liability. He also worked together with Belgrade radio station B92 to broadcast its radio signal live on the Internet after it was censored by the Milosevic regime. In 1997 he led XS4ALL through another Internet issue that grabbed global headlines when German ISP's tried to block XS4ALL's servers because it hosted a homepage of the radical-left magazine Radikal which is illegal in Germany; the German actions failed as they resulted in a rapid worldwide mirroring of the page by Internet users. He co-founded the Amsterdam Digital City Network in 1994. In 1995, he created the Dutch ISP Association and chaired it until 1997. In 1996, he conceived the first Internet hotline (www.meldpunt.org) to combat the distribution of child pornography on the Internet.
Sold his share in XS4ALL to the Dutch phone company KPN in December 1998. He also sold the Spanish restaurant that he had run in the heart of Amsterdam since age 18, and he now resides at Bondi Beach, Australia. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Electronic Frontiers Australia, supervisory director at Bitmagic NV, and supervisory director at XS4ALL. He was born in Amsterdam and is of dual Spanish and Dutch nationality.
Na zijn vertrek bij XS4ALL in 1997 was Rodriquez lid van de Europese Commissie-werkgroep Illegal and harmful content on the Internet, en adviseur van de PvdA over internetwetgeving.
