Born in Italy, Spinelli started his journalistic career writing for
VNU Business Publications and
Feltrinelli. Since the last 2000s, he has been columnist for the newspaper
Punto Informatico. While still a university student, in 2004 he founded
Oscon, a legal non-profit and
open project committed to spreading an open standard contract and which provides
pro bono legal advising. Up to 2018, the contract has been downloaded more than 220.000 times and it is one of the most used in the country. During his career, Spinelli has conducted
investigations, which gave rise to widespread debates. In July 2007,
MPs Franco Grillini and Cinzia Dato appended one of Spinelli's investigations about
copyright to a
parliamentary inquiry towards vice-Prime Minister
Francesco Rutelli, promoting a reform of the legislation on copyright. After this investigation, the lack of
freedom of panorama in the Italian legal system has been considered a matter of fact and a subject of discussion. In the same year, Spinelli's reporting on a security bill promoted by the Government, caused its correction during the
Council of Ministers of Italy. In 2008, his investigation on the
Government budget revealed the intent of the Government to establish public funding for record labels, causing debates with deputy
Gabriella Carlucci and the
FIMI's president. The same year, Spinelli wrote an investigation, cited by Sergio Rizzo in his bestseller
Rapaci (
Rizzoli), about the institutional
web portal Italia.it, in which he revealed the waste of
public money. criticisms by journalists and politicians (
Gad Lerner, Vincenzo Vita,
Giuseppe Giulietti,
Pino Scaccia), and eventually caused the withdrawal of the bill. The bill was scheduled to be discussed to the
Chamber of Deputies, but the
fall of the Government halted the process. It was supported again by the
Radical Party in the late 2010. The following year, Spinelli's journalistic investigation „
La Camera manda avanti il Ddl anti-blog“ was nominated for the
30th Ischia International Journalism Award. For Swiss newspapers, he released the news of the fall of Switzerland into the
gray list of
tax heavens, and subsequently commented most of the
tax treaty between Switzerland and other nations (USA, United Kingdom, Mexico, Qatar, India...). In June 2015 he published with
Wired a broad investigation about
privacy management laws over the world. Afterwards, Spinelli worked with the
Creative Commons group for the translation into Italian of the
Creative Commons 4.0 licenses, published in the late 2017. Amongst the Italian expert on
accessibility, he was a selected member of the SIE (Italian associate of the
International Ergonomics Association), and has been publishing educational articles and essays. He has lectured and provided
scientific and legal consulting to the
University of Genoa. He is also author of interviews with minister
Antonio Di Pietro, scientist
Corrado Böhm and activist
Ludwig Minelli. ==Awards and nominations==