Lars Christian Engström (born 9 February 1960) is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

computer programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

activist Activism (or Advocacy) consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived greater good. Forms of activism range fro ...

and

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, ...

. He is deputy chairman of the Swedish

Pirate Party Pirate Party is a label adopted by political parties around the world. Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy (including e-democracy) or alternatively participation in government, reform of copyright and patent law, free shari ...

. Engström was elected a

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

(MEP) in the 2009 election.

Education and career

Christian Engström was born in Högalid,

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

. He graduated from

Stockholm University Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, ...

in 1983 with a degree in

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

. While studying, Engström worked as a

tutor TUTOR, also known as PLATO Author Language, is a programming language developed for use on the PLATO system at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign beginning in roughly 1965. TUTOR was initially designed by Paul Tenczar for use in ...

at the university, teaching

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

Simula Simula is the name of two simulation programming languages, Simula I and Simula 67, developed in the 1960s at the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo, by Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard. Syntactically, it is an approximate superset of ALGO ...

. From 1978 he also worked part-time as a

programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

at Skriptor, a small company which specialized in phonetic similarity searches for trademark names. After finishing his studies he started working full-time at the company. He became a partner in the firm in 1987 and in 1991 he became vice president. In 1997 the company was sold to the leading European trademark search house CompuMark. Engström stayed on in a similar capacity as before until 2001, when he left the company to set up his own consultancy firm Glindra AB.

Activism and politics

For five years Engström worked as an unpaid

within the

Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) is a non-profit organisation based in Munich, Germany, dedicated to establishing a free market in information technology, by the removal of barriers to competition. The FFII played a ke ...

(FFII), lobbying against

software patents A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, libraries, user interface, or algorithm. Background A patent is a set of exclusionary rights granted by a state to a patent holder for a limited period of time, u ...

. He was active in the campaign against the EU software patent directive, which was rejected by the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the Legislature, legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven Institutions of the European Union, institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and in ...

in July 2005. He also co-founded the Swedish section of FFII and served as its deputy chairman during the first year. In the late 1980s, Engström became a member of the Swedish Liberal People's Party. He served as a

lay assessor A lay judge, sometimes called a lay assessor, is a person assisting a judge in a trial. Lay judges are used in some civil law jurisdictions. Lay judges are appointed volunteers and often require some legal instruction. However, they are not permane ...

( sv, nämndeman) for the party in the

Stockholm District Court Stockholm District Court ( sv, Stockholms tingsrätt) is a Swedish district court in Stockholm. Stockholm District Court is Sweden's largest public court and is located in Stockholm Court House on Kungsholmen in Stockholm. History The Stockhol ...

between 1992 and 1998 and was active in local politics in

Bromma Bromma () is a borough (''stadsdelsområde'') in the western part of Stockholm, Sweden, forming part of the Stockholm Municipality. Bromma is primarily made up of Bromma Parish and Västerled Parish. The fourth largest airport in Sweden and the t ...

. He left the Liberal People's Party on 1 January 2006, following the founding of the Pirate Party. Engström was elected a

(MEP) in the

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operat ...

held on 7 June 2009, in which the Pirate Party won 7.1% of the votes and received one mandate. However, when the Lissabon treaty came into effect a second mandate

Amelia Andersdotter Amelia Anna Matilda Katarina Andersdotter (born 30 August 1987 in Uppsala) is a Swedish politician and former Member of the European Parliament (2011–2014), elected on the Pirate Party list in the 2009 election. Personal life Amelia An ...

entered parliament for Piratpartiet. Engström was placed as his party's top candidate and received 43,808 votes (19% of the Pirate Party's total votes). After negotiations with some of the

political groups of the European Parliament The political groups of the European Parliament are the officially recognised political groups consisting of legislators of aligned ideologies in the European Parliament. The European Parliament is unique among supranational assemblies in th ...

, it was announced on 25 June 2009 that Engström will join the green group ( Greens–EFA). Engström was the only Swedish member of the European Parliament who voted against Mary Honeyball's report "Sexual exploitation and

prostitution Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in Sex work, sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, n ...

and its impact on gender equality", which recommends EU member states to adopt the "Swedish Model" that criminalises the purchase of sexual services.

Personal life

Engström is married and has one son. He lives with his family in

Nacka Nacka () is the municipal seat of Nacka Municipality and part of Stockholm urban area in Sweden. The municipality's name harks back to a 16th-century industrial operation established by the Crown at Nacka farmstead where conditions for water mil ...

Stockholm County Stockholm County ( sv, Stockholms län, link=no ) is a county or ''län'' (in Swedish) on the Baltic Sea coast of Sweden. It borders Uppsala County and Södermanland County. It also borders Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. The city of Stockho ...

References

External links

* * at

The Pirate Party Makes a Bid for the European Parliament
Wired.com article, features interview with Christian Engström. {{DEFAULTSORT:Engstrom, Christian Living people 1960 births Pirate Party (Sweden) politicians Writers from Stockholm Stockholm University alumni Swedish computer programmers Swedish bloggers Intellectual property activism Copyright activists Pirate Party (Sweden) MEPs MEPs for Sweden 2009–2014 Articles containing video clips

Education and career

Activism and politics

Personal life

See also

References

External links