Someone from EF Sweden asked, "If you are just a small group of concerned and like-minded people on a mailing list, how can you turn that group into an EFFective network of activists?"

For a long time, the Electronic Frontier Norway (EFN) was such a small group, a community organized around an Internet mailing list. Even today we are mostly a mailing list, with 400 subscribers, and all our press releases, open letters, position documents etc. are posted, criticized, edited and polished on the list until they are ready for publication and distribution. We have a large base of knowledgeable people who have precious little time to spare, but usually they can spare 10-15 minutes now and then to offer arguments and criticisms of documents under preparation. EFN started as a mailing list in 1991. In 1995 we held a constitutive general assembly and elected a board and a set of by-laws (until that time, the list-owner had been pretty much the leader of the group, and there had been occasional face-to-face meetings among the most active people on the list).

I think there are at least three factors which are essential in taking the step from a mailing list to an effective activist network:

1. Occasional physical meetings where people get to meet each other.

It can be the yearly (or even only every second year) general assembly. It can be organizing one or two public debates a year, e.g. on campus, about some hot topic at the time. It can be a rally, if you have a really hot topic, such as the Jon Johansen case. Physical meetings can create a sense of community and commitment which can be difficult to attain from a mailing list-only environment.

2. Create some vague resemblance of a formal structure.

Have a somewhat regular general assembly, elect a board and president. Someone on that board must be easily available to journalists and the media. Each statement from the EF should list 2-3 people to contact for further information, interviews etc. about the topic at hand, and at least one of these people should be easily available on a cell phone most of the time.

3. Build a media address list religiously.

Every time a journalist contacts the EF, add her/his address to that address list (of course tell them that you do so - "we'll add you to our press release list so that you get the information about the case as soon as we release it"). Every time a journalist writes a piece in some net publication about any EF-relevant topic, contact the journalist, comment briefly on the article, refer to the EF web site, and add the journalist to the press release list ("we are preparing a statement on this topic in the near future. We'll add you to our press release list so that you'll get it as soon as we release it."). I have a list with a couple of hundred names on journalists gathered this way, and I've never encountered any protests. On the contrary, they thank me for keeping them informed. Scour the web sites of all relevant newspaper and magazines for editorial addresses, and add them to the press release list (no, it's not spamming as long as you have a minimum of criteria for selection: you want technical publications in EF-relevant fields, political-cultural publications, and general news publications such as the general newspapers, radio and TV stations in your country).

This way EFN has been able to gain quite a bit of media coverage, and perhaps to have some impact. See www.efn.no/efn-i-media.html for a link list to whatever EFN mentionings in the media that we are aware of (mostly in Norwegian).

The last week (of February 2002) we experienced significant success with our criticisms of Sony's new copy blocked CDs (aka "the Shakira case"). Our criticisms were covered in at least 8-10 major publications. I was interviewed for 4 minutes on Norwegian national prime time TV, by NRK. NRK is the state-run (or at least state-initiated, now being more and more deregulated) TV & radio station in Norway. They have two TV channels, and my interview was aired on both (first on NRK 2 around (8:30 p.m. and then rerun on NRK 1 around midnight). And it seems that the consumer protection authorities in Norway may become actively involved in the case. It also seems that the film industry-created Orwellian Newspeak euphemism"copy protection" is on the decline, and that our term "copy block" is gaining foothold in Norwegian media.

I think it's basically the three factors described above that have made it possible for EFN to reach our current level of success, despite most of our work being limited by a lot of busy people who can only contribute 10-15 minutes each every now and then. Of course the Jon Johansen case helps us gain sympathy and support too, and has contributed both to our visibility in the media and to the motivation to contribute and engage in activism for EFN's causes.