[IRPCoalition] IRP Coalition-Steering Committee (2)

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 10:59:32AM +0100, Marianne Franklin (m.i.franklin at gold.ac.uk) wrote:

> The list of candidates-nominees for the Steering Committee is
> looking strong. Are there any more candidates or nominations?

Count me in.

> In the meantime those of you who are standing (again), if you could
> send the list a brief statement so that people know or can
> reacquaint themselves with who you are, what you do, and your
> interest in furthering the IRP Charter and Coalition's work.

Brief, she says. OK, let's try.

I am former president, currently vice president of Electronic
Frontier Finland, aka Effi (not formally affiliated with EFF,
similar name and purpose notwithstanding), fighting for a better
world as it were, mainly for freedom speech and privacy in
the Internet.

Of the two types of people in Effi, lawyers who've learned
something about computers and computer geeks who've learned
something about law, I belong to the latter: I am primarily
a technical person, building my own computers and running
my own name servers for fun, but on several occasions
people have thought I'm a lawyer (scary, that).

I was in Tunis WSIS 2005 where IGF was founded and in every
IGF so far; I was there when the Internet Bill of Rights
coalition was formed but didn't really participate,
but later when it became the IRP coalition and especially
when the charter was being drafted I was fairly active at
times, as some people may remember (can't point to the
mailing list archives as they're presently inaccessible,
but I'm working on it).

I was also just elected to the executive committee of
NCUC (Non-Commercial Users' Constituency) of
ICANN GNSO (Generic Name Supportint Organization),
which probably should count against me here, as it'll
compete of my time with IRP.

Besides that, as Effi has no money to pay anybody wages, I earn my
keep at University of Jyväskylä in central Finland with the unprobable
title (actually mistranslation of something even stranger in Finnish)
of "chief engineer", providing technical support for, eh, "unusual
stuff", i.e., whatever strange things our researchers dream up and
university regular IT support refuses to touch with a ten-feet pole,
and doing research of my own and occasionaly teaching as time allows.
I am also deputy member of Finnish Data Protection Board (which
handles appeals on certain privacy legislation issues in Finland).

As for IRP, I believe it is important to keep human rights
on the agenda when Internet-related issues are being decided
or talked about. The 10 principles are a good reference in
such contexts. So is the long charter, but it needs more work,
it's been in beta stage far too long, and that's something
we should work on, and I hope I'll be able to do at least
a little on my part to make it happen.

***

Darn. Failed again. Brevity is *hard*.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen