Electronic Frontier Finland - EFFI ry

Electronic Frontier Finland ry (EFFI) was founded in 2001 to defend active users and citizens of the Finnish society in the electronic frontier. EFFI influences legislative proposals concerning e.g. personal privacy, freedom of speech and user rights in copyright law. We make statements, press releases and participate actively in actual public policy and legal discussion. EFFI also works in close cooperation with organizations sharing same goals and values in the Europe, United States and elsewhere. EFFI is a founding member of the European Digital Rights (EDRi).

The members of the board and many active members are experts in the fields of law and technology. Many of us do University-level research on these matters.

If you want to support EFFI, check our attitude T-Shirts. Yes, we ship them to any address in the world! You may also want to join EFFI or donate for our non-profit work in Finland and the EU.

(Note: If you can read Finnish, please click on the flag in the top right corner. There is a lot more material in Finnish and it's also updated more often.)

Recent publications in English:

News mentioning EFFI in English (and other languages than Finnish):

"War on Electronic Privacy Attendees of Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference fight for high tech civil liberties" (SF Gate 2003-04-10)

"Robin Gross Seeks International IP Justice" (O'Reilly Network 2003-02-20)

"Reformera upphovsrätten grundligt" (Huvudstadsbladet 2003-02-20)

"Grassroots Effort in Finland Defeats EUCD's Broad Bans" (IP Justice 2003-01-31)

"Finland drops EUCD for now" (Slashdot 2003-01-31)

"Finland Proposes Editorial Culpability for Web Content" (Slashdot 2003-01-22)

"More arrests in Sonera snooping probe" (The Register 2002-11-26)

"European Digital Rights launches" (The Register 2002-06-13)

"Privacy groups take efforts to European level" (ZDNet UK 2002-06-13)

"Toch nog een europese burgerrechtenorganisatie" (Netkwesties 2002-06-13)

"Låt internet komma till tals!" (Lysmasken, ledare 2002-06-10)

" LinuxPR: SOT, MySQL, and EFFI Team Up to Oppose Software Patents" (Linux Today 2002-05-28)

The current activities of EFFI include:

Big Brother awards
EFFI awarded the first Finnish Big Brother awards in May 2002.
Privacy
The new technologies bring new threats to privacy. EFFI has critizised the Finnish travel card project, which collects personal information without really needing to do so. EFFI tried to influence the content of EU directive on the surveillance of telecommunications.
Freedom of expression
Proposed law on liabilities in public communications threatens the existence of Finnish Internet discussion forums by placing unnecessary judicial and technical burdens on them. The law would require extensive collection of surveillance data of practically all Internet traffic. EFFI awarded a Big Brother award to the legislators of this law and has since been trying to influence on this matter.
Spam
One of the objectives of EFFI is to ban spam. The new EU telecommunications privacy directive bans spam ("opt-in principle"). EFFI contacted all Finnish MEPs before the deciding vote and tried to convince them to vote for the opt-in principle. EFFI has been closely involved in the developement of best current practices for electronic marketing under the Finnish anti-spam legislation.
Copyright
Finland, as the rest of the EU, is getting a DMCA of their own. If the proposed Finnish law would go through it would be a crime to watch or even give away R1 DVD discs bought legally from abroad. The Finnish legislators want to make circumventing the technical copyright protections even for personal use a crime. EFFI has been active in public discussion and we have given many statements and participated many seminars on the copyright law.
Software patents
The European Commission tries to bring the software patents to Europe, following the US lead. EFFI has given a statement on the issue to the relevant Finnish authorities, recommending against the adaptation of software patents.