 Somit, civil rights group called EFFI. We are two guys from Finland who founded this organization like two years ago. My name is Miko and he is Ville. What we are trying to tell you is what we actually did there in Finland and how could we influence Finnish lawmakers and Finnish policy makers. And in recent times also European wide activity. mitä on tapahtunut in brusselta, ja mitä olemme tullut siellä, jotta saamme ilmastossa ja ympäristöryhmä, ja ympäristöryhmä, mitä olemme tullut myös täällä Uusia, joka on nyt niin kuin ympäristöryhmä. Puhuttelua, että meidän nimeltä ei ole yksinkertaisu EFF, in any official sense. We just fair use their trademark. It's like electronic frontier Finland. When we founded this organization, I just browsed the domain name database and found out that that's very interesting domain name. It's almost EFF. We can be confused with EFF. We are having similar goals and similar values, but of course we are independent organization in a very little country far away from here. So maybe we just write with their good name. Here's some kind of background with official figures what has happened so far. So we were founded in September 2001. It was something like two weeks before the attacks, or even less it was one week and bit more. That was just coincidence. Now we have over 300 members. We are like member support organization. All members like pay membership fees annually and they do actively participate in what we do. And the number has been growing steadily. I think we have like 350, maybe 400 members now. Most are from Finland, but we also have international members nowadays. I would guess something like less than 10% are international members from different countries, even from the United States. So the kind of brainwork what happens in EFFI is done by a small board. We have like let's say 8 board members and then couple other guys who are very like interesting and do volunteer work there. In the beginning we were just like 2 or 3 guys, but now it's like 10 active guys who do something to boost this message forward. And most of us are working at the universities in Finland and also in some companies there. This is of course volunteer work. No money is involved. Only the money we get in. As donations we use to put some like public stuff up. Actually latest project I'm trying to push forward is to establish 3 EFFI hotspots in Finland with our money we have gathered from members and donations. But so far what we have done is basically that we have commented law proposals doing all kind of paperwork trying to put media releases out if there is some new law proposal out there and what we think about it. Maybe the 2 most important law proposals so far we have commented and really changed have been the copyright proposal similar kind that you have the DMCA here and another one was about like free speech issues. I think we have some slides on those. Okay later. This is something about our European wide network we have been trying to build during the couple of last years. So we have like cooperated with EFF on some issues and other organizations here in the US and also in Europe. In 2002 we founded one European wide coalition network and that tries to influence stuff in the Brussels. We have some more about it later. This is European digital rights. And then you have global internet liberty campaign. It's like everywhere it doesn't have national borders although it doesn't have like a legal reasons anywhere either. Our home page is there. You can go there and buy our merchandise and all kinds of stuff. We actually have t-shirts here. We don't sell them there but after this presentation we can perhaps show you something. Here are some statistics of our membership development which has been quite steady. I think the most important steps here have been somewhere in the middle. In the beginning we got something like 50 members quite easily. Those were the most active guys who like were on the mailing list and discusses these topics what happens when copyright broadens. What happens if you have a software patent in Europe and that kind of stuff. But when we got media releases true in major newspapers and also on television then we started to gain more like members who are generally interested in these issues. Not just tech people but also like journalists and teenagers who like think those guys are cool and doing something important but really don't understand the issues. Sorry about it. They don't hear this presentation they are far away. At least hopefully. Somebody takes a video there but I don't know where it goes. Now we have as I said something like 350 maybe 400 members. As a DF have something like 10,000. At least they claim. But you never know those figures. But EFF has been in has been around like more than 10 years and we have been just 2 years putting our stuff up. Here are some like rational why should you have a member organization. We have been like talking with lots of different groups who do same kind of stuff as we do. In almost every European country there is a similar kind of group compared to ours. I will also guess that in the United States in different states you have different kind of little groups. Grassroots organization you have this EFF which is like nationwide. But many of these groups are not like members who put in in a real sense. There are just like couple of guys who put the organization up to do some media releases and that kind of stuff. And what we have like found is that this approach doesn't last very long. When the original founders on those who are interested they do something else, they grow up or something else then it just like fades out. Maybe it's similar thing or you can compare it in some sense to opens or development. You have to have a real community which can like make the thing live on. So what you have to do if you want to put up a new organization or you want to make an existing organization like thriving I guess you have to get out of the closet and really like get real. Say that there are some people you represent. There is like hundreds of people you are speaking of not just yourself and your ideas. If you want to make like political influence of course different thing if you want to hack a website or something like that. It's another approach but we are not doing that officially. So the idea is really to get active members. How to get active members it's magic how to get them I don't know. We have like 10 to 15 maybe active members totally. We have 400 members totally but just 10 to 15 do something like which counts. You want to say something about this slide. Here are some dates and as you can see we managed to get the flying start and of course it's quite easy to get in Finland to media compared to United States especially national level because in Finland we actually have only four national TV station and that's about it when we have some small cable TV station which are mostly in bankruptcy at the moment. So the TV screen in Finland is quite small and as a result especially Miko has been a lot of in different talk shows and different interviews and every time practically something happens which relates to counter security or copyright or whatever private questions reporters now they call us. It's very practical because we don't necessarily even have to say it anymore any press releases or anything that we know instantly but we have comments and we are ready to present them in TV or whatever. And also we was very lucky that we managed to get to the parliament from very early on or we have been participating from inside the political system instead of just trying to influence from media we have been participating in parliamentary hearings and that's much more effective because the politicians actually even respond if you have something clever or reasonable to say and for example I guess the biggest hit was when we managed to be on during the time the copyright law was handled in parliament we both actually invited to give our testimonies and I think we made the difference there and actually yes that copyright law was copyright law thing was actually part of fight against the UCD as some of you might know it's practically similar law than digital millenium copyright act only that it's actually worse it doesn't have really any kind of fair use exemption for for example for the guitar rights management if the works are sale in internet and well this comes from the European Union but the Neuvalaismi national states don't have any other option than to create national law out of it and well in Finland we had especially heinous one as the first person but luckily well we actually both started copyright so we were quite well informed what's going on and started to blocking it from early on and actually managed to get some success because in the end Finnish parliament sent the law back because it was so bad and I think that this shows that it's really possible if you have good arguments to tell politicians that there is such a thing as too strong intellectual property regime of course there was some other reason why that law was sent back for example parliament practically ran out of time and Finland had the chance to start making a replacement law and try to make it better and yeah if there's any parts you might add some comments What is on the next slide? Actually we had this last post when we blocked the law proposal at the Finnish parliament the copyright law proposal of course there were lots of things because for the reason it was blocked but what happened in the end was that we claimed victory we also claimed victory in the Finnish media and the thing is that the Finnish parliament it was changed during the last spring they got new elections there and now that we have like claimed victory before now they have like sent us letters and they have like invited us to the sessions when they draft the new law from the beginning beginning so we can like influence it even more in the future okay this is just Finland it's a very tiny country and we have the European wild stuff happening in every European country and our power to influence other countries in Europe is limited what we can perhaps do is to influence the European Union in Brussels and of course there if we have even the mandate of the Finland the country it's just like 5 million people it's peanuts there are countries like United Kingdom of Germany which have like 50 to 100 million people living there and a much stronger economy anyway yeah unfortunately because it's EU directive it means that sooner or later Finland has to transpose it to the national law and we fight cause on and we just got the new version out and as Mikko already told we are invited to participate to the crafting so we hope to make it better hacking won't be a crime in Finland according to our press releases so here's another law proposal which we really like to change in the Finnish parliament this was like a local law proposal not that interesting international sense but anyway there was the idea that to censor all material published on the internet and it was based on a very old law in Finland where it was required that all presses like censored by the state it's related back to the times when Finland was under Russia and there was a char governing in Finland and they want to control everything that was published in Finland in Finnish press but nobody publishes any material which is against the char power well that's perhaps a bit of an expression but that's the origin of the law now the law had of course changed during the times and the latest version like what is now active Finland says that every newspaper must have an editor in chief and must like monitor what is published even in the letters to the editor pages and so on and if there is something like infringing published then the editor in chief in principle liable for that and they want to extend this law to the internet where basically any web page would have needed an editor in chief which would have needed needed to be like over 18 years old the legal age in Finland and would be liable for anything published under those web pages even like chat pages and all kind of kind of interactive content so there was some requirement you had to actually argue all web publication for 3 months and have 18 year old editor in chief and you had to log all traffic which was happening in interactive size like chat size and everything by the law if you didn't like to qualify these things then in principle police could have came and pull the plug pull the plug of your servers yeah especially because it was a criminal liability not such civil and there was no definition what is web publication any web page would have like required these things yeah it was more or less something like if you update your web page really more or less I would say quite often it would have been a publication in a sense of gold version so what we were able to do is like to already also get heard in the parliament life with the copyright law proposed out and we also like joined ISPs we called them and asked what they wanted to do of course ISPs didn't want that people had more burdens to publish web pages ISPs wanted people to publish more and more material online and we had lots of lobbying happening there there was the international chamber of commerce which also joined our activities and published their press release and tried to influence members of parliament and then we were heard in the constitutional law committee and there the chair of the committee was very like polite to us and she asked what is exactly what you want there how do we write this law and they really like changed the law as we wanted to be changed and almost all of those crazy requirements were dropped off and the definition of web publication was like clarified it only means like traditional press if you have a big newspaper their web pages have those requirements they had before in printed press actually we got some international press release is also out based on this lilac human there what else do we have yeah then we have like given this big brother award also in Finland this was one of the latest award ceremony we got one member of the parliament this fellow here to give the awards and of course the recipient is the famous one this is just a stormtrooper water wasn't there I guess he is in the united states somewhere the winner of the big brother award this year was very big telecom company it's nowadays called Delia Sonera it's like a Swedish Finnish merger between two state-owned ISPs it penetrates the market has like 50% something similar of all ISP mobile phone connections what they have done so far before they got this prestigious award was that their top management had a snooped mobile phone traffic they listened to your phones they also read your e-mail they did all this classic stuff and it was the top management heads of corporate communications all well like jailed that was pretty heavy stuff so everything we could do is just to give them the big brother what else I don't know the term still like runs quite heavily they are listed on hashtag so you have something about this yeah and as we have quite a few times already mentioned Finland has to transpose all the directives from European Union and as a result even if we are successful in lobbying in Finland it doesn't really help because we have to be able to lobby in Brussels and but that's the reason why I've been pushing for EFF Europe from early on and it actually came through in 2000 and through as most ambitious groups in Europe managed to finally found European digital rights and I'm actually at the moment a member of that organization which unfortunately it doesn't really work even at the moment very well we have some working groups being founded right now which are open for individuals otherwise it's just for member organizations or national organizations and besides that there's luckily something else going on also in Europe or some of you might have heard about Eurolinux Alliance is lobbying against drugs for patents and it's actually very successful in it and we have been also participating to that effort in Finland and at the moment it actually seems possible that in Europe at least European Parliament will vote against full software patent it will be possible to patent software as part of device or for example part of mobile phone but not anymore as it's not anymore possible to get pure software patents well anyway the deciding vote is on September so there's going to be quite heavy lobbying going on next for about half months I guess and we are actually trying to get Linus Turvals to also participate to the lobbying which is of course never reached us because he hates lobbying and politics but anyway he's person who might have also a lot of influence in Parliament so in the end I wouldn't be that pessimistic that we couldn't like influence in Brussels too it takes of course longer time to have some power in there there's like over 500 members of the Parliament in Brussels from different countries in Europe there's like a Z12 or something member countries at the moment and now they like expand from the beginning of 2004 I think there's like more than 15 maybe even 20 countries in European Union I don't actually know about the figures there and there will be like 600 members in the Parliament like voting there you should have like majority like 300 members to vote for your ideas it will be very difficult Finland has like 5 members of Parliament there or something like that that's quite tiny portion if you need 300 anyway but if you have this kind of network and you have lots of groups in different countries in Europe we would like to change their opinion in future and this patenting case is a good first example where we try to unite and little try to stop the stupid idea of software patents there so here here's some kind of higher superstition of what we are really trying to do I need to put it in one sentence it's like we are human change agent I have read Peter Drucker's book managing nonprofit organization and this is his message and it's quite interesting the idea is to change the perception of individual people, policy makers those who have power of the things which are in the society right now you should like understand that some laws make maybe bad laws and maybe like threatening from our perspective and the basic premise there is that politicians do not know they rely on sources which are like they are not like informed as we are okay there is the presumption that we are right of course we can be wrong too and hackers have been wrong in many issues which are not like tech related before but that's the premise we must work on and we try to change the message of course of their sources too we try to influence the mass media they are like listening to we try to change the perception of their like experts they like trust and of course we must understand that there is still like lots of ignorance of politicians especially those who are elder and European for reasons unknown especially like southern Europe is very like it's like maybe five years after what northern Europe is in technologically progress there is not many internet accesses in southern European countries compared to the population if you compare it to northern Europe that's like a problem in Europe this was your slide okay I hope at this point at least some of you are asking so what I can do and there is lot of answers to this question and of course the easiest one to give money to somebody else to do the job and it's actually not a good strategy for example the folks in the EU they are doing extremely nice job and for us it's also very important that we get some funding to be able to improve the day to day tasks and of course if a person wants to do more there is another possibility which is to become an activist and again here is two possibilities to just be an unorganized or just act alone or perhaps sometimes participate to some organized events in a big way just while in practice just do your stuff by yourself or a number option which is organized activism start your own association or start doing these kind of things and these are actually both very important for example unorganized activism in practice means that for example if a person for example if there is some kind of law introduced in parliament but you just tell your friends what's going on and perhaps say that please contact some person in parliament and try to get other people active this is very important while we have been talking quite a lot about organized activism already and it's also very important because in practice only organized activists get access to parliament and get a chance to get to the hearings and so on and of course one of good reasons to start doing it is that it actually can be fun or at least I think that both me and Komi have had a lot of fun doing stuff and it's always nice to piece of organization like RIAA or it's in our case finished version of it and of course one part of it but if you're really lucky you might be even able to get to the DEFGON for free and also affecting activism for example just seeing a real website is not in practice if you do something like that it doesn't really hurt them it's just gives more reasons to claim to US Congress but okay these guys are criminals and they are doing a lot of nasty stuff and so on not a good idea instead for example study for example how copy protection system works on CDs scientific or pseudo scientific article out of it of course this can be bit legally riskful in Europe it most likely isn't but in United States it might be and get this kind of information out it's always good to have for example anonymous P2P systems like free net and helping people to code these kind of systems is definitely something that people should help and another thing is but in practice well of course politicians more or less get their signals from media and they follow what's going on from media mostly and that means that if you want to get through you have to get to media and in practice it's too expensive to buy advertisements some bigger organization have nowadays resources for it for example for us it's a total out of question instead of we have been learned how to use so called free press actually the newspapers like to get the material this is easy to publish if you know how to write a press release this is very easy to convert to a new story the laser reporters take this material and use it and I guess so far all of our press releases have been published in at least one newspaper or magazine we also learned by experience that you should have quotes in your press releases many newspapers do not publish press releases press releases which are like written that you make a statement there that's not a good idea you should have a statement but you should also have quotes and this person says this thing other person says this thing that's a good press release much wider coverage because as a result the reporter can write lots of articles but it seems like he had been interviewing that person right lots of articles lots of articles in newspapers really like interviews are actually from press releases where you have like written quotes some person in the media department has figured out this is a good quote let's write it there and put some CEO's name in there that's the reality my experience another one is I guess Miko is arranging tickets but anyway it's very effective way to get media attention because if you speak about some very boring topic like copyright generally speaking it's not a nice story for media and especially for TV it doesn't look good to have to have some guy next to the computer or something talking about blah blah copyright blah blah instead of having a couple of guys outside some places having funny looking signs and doing stuff it's a much bigger news story immediately and that's actually one of ways to get quite easily free media I think Greenpeace has an image problem also they have a funding problem we are very small organization and unless you have lots of resources I think it's very risky to do tickets and do this kind of CEO obedience and support it but nevertheless Greenpeace really masters this Greenpeace is a very big organization but you can also learn how to mimic their strategies but anyway as you can see we disagree we don't do this kind of stuff yet as of yet and anyway of course version this so called anti-globalization movement style which is practically causing or raising riots outside the meeting place where different international treaties are being negotiated and where do you get 10,000 hackers for us it's not possible but the second of all it's actually not a good place or at least from my point of view anti-globalization movement has managed to create an image that peace people don't know anything about the content these are just out and free and these are places it's never good for getting your message too and well this is a bit riskable one because well actually this is what lawyers do we are more or less trained to look for legal exploits or to find out where loopholes in laws are about the same as boxing code if you want to compare and if you learn how to find loopholes it definitely helps for you let's take a practical example okay this is typical part of the flow it's out of your copyright directive and this section more or less makes it illegal to for example create a software like the CCS or whatever is used to break DVD encryption but instead of releasing such a software of its N-groups sorry DVD it's possible to create a program which has a commercially significant purpose for example you create a small DVD player and release it as an open source and this program has inside it code for N-group DVD and as a result it should be legal in Europe of course for example here is this ANC has to be also a full field but typically nobody wants to market a circulation tool as such so this is kind of like just to think about it should you find an association if you find some issue in political arena or in law like a disgusting if you should first take the if there's like any active organization like EFF here or any other organization in your state or country or regional level you're working on or living in if you're not like happy what they are doing try to influence them I think for example EFF is very difficult to influence at the moment at least they have like 10,000 members but who is actually making decisions there I think they have had the same board practically the last 10 years if you want to be a board member there don't even think about it you need to find practically find your own association here this is kind of criticism but it's reality so if it's not like possible to hide second or existing organization you have to find your own how to make it thriving that's the big problem it's of course easier to do it with existing organization but if it's not possible then you have to find your your way to do it and of course what matters is the results not the means to the end and the easiest way to the goal is of course the best one or what you have there here is some like a wrap up of our experience what you should do if you want to find a member organization make it such that there is like individual members and people like feel they belong in the organization and there is little like people you are moving from one place to other of people who you are like on behalf of whom you are like speaking try to ally with other groups and try to make like together any press releases or any activism it's a good idea public often like press releases and try to get respectable name in your region and try to get to the media it's very good to know many journalists and have friends and allies allies there and I think it's also very important speak like roughly and straight in like not in slang language but in straight language and make short comments and such comments that journalists can like a further develop and find more arguments in support and again and of course you must make direct communication between policymakers this is very time consuming and takes lots of resources to call the politicians who are making an important decision somewhere and those politicians get lots of calls anyway so how can you get your message through it's really like tough job especially if nobody pays for it okay this is also last slide after question I guess the idea is there that we have given these teasers to other people to we have them here the idea here was that people throw these teasers to or any kind of free material to audience members this is the idea here I think I can throw you one teasers I first like this this is the excel size this is our most like popular model this is commercial presentation and if you want to cut this today our organization is here until they finish and the factory has inspired like statement as a media corporation use corporate life use corporate background use corporate communication you can't play on your hero's joy use fact use unstable operating system unfair individualize and financialize the disease use the digital television use personal deterioration use government surveillance use law enforcement use vice American entertainment use giant stuff use an ISP wondering who else read your e-mail use sitting on a couch what do you want now with spirit trust you will be sold stopping some food in your mouth use spending the rest of your year but nothing more than a mean-minded consumer statistic if the sales is pretty bad how do you help your country to money making media play out choose your future that's our statement lucky owner is there we have also like a couple more teasers here these are for sale 20 bucks a piece if you have any questions just direct them it's been implemented I think like in four countries at the moment first it was implemented in Denmark, Greece and then what country is now implemented in Germany is implemented too and then some other countries too but it's going on at the moment and I think within a year it's almost in every country in Europe but it's still going on the deadline was in last December but by the deadline only Greece and Denmark were able to do it anything else? yes sir I don't support picketing but Wille does it depends if you cannot well picketing itself doesn't really matter but if you manage to get your picket into a television when it's good generally speaking of course at least in Europe politicians are very used to pickets and you have to arrange something very big in order to get any really many attention on the other hand on this question it's just so rare event that let's say hackers go out and picket but I guess at least some media would make just a story out of it but it's possible to see hackers outside or something like that yes sir we were actually last year we have a parliamentary elections in Finland and we were trying to create a so called election search machine so we were asking questions of politicians about all of the topic which is very important for us and created a database out of that information so that members could search what different candidates think but we don't directly support any candidates we just try to make the decision easier for informed hackers and we will like try to act as a kind of mediator between individuals and the policymakers if anyone has a question in Finland to some parliament members we can try to ask the question directly anyway for an organization it's very riskful to be connected to directly to certain politicians because for example if you are in good relationship to a leftist party or to a green party the conservative side of political spectrum start to hate you and of course it's not a good idea conservatives are in power yes sir it's the same thing in Europe and at least in Brussels if you want to name one party which is like more supportive to our ideals is green party which is like basically left this party in Europe and then you have a radical party that's like a it's more or less like center it doesn't it's simple to put it on left or right line in traditional sense but on the other hand we have also some conservatives in favor of us so I guess it's same this is not traditional right left wing question or this question sir and kind of problem in Europe is that there's not like strong liberal party there which could be like supportive yes sir sorry yep or libertarian or whatever but those parties are not that strong in Europe like for example in Finland there is such a party and I think in every European country they're practically in principle is such a party but in practice they don't have any members in parliament or anything it's a Soviet Russia thing you know we have this big power there couple years back well I'll be done