Finland cops deny censorship charge
p2pnet news | Freedom:- Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation says it doesn’t use censorship.
The NBI has apparently launched a criminal investigation into the online activities of software expert and activist Matti Nikki (right) who worries, "Are they are suspecting me of aiding in distribution of child porn?"
That’s because "The pages, maintained by Matti Nikki, contained hundreds of links to sites that are on the NBI list," as Utkik posts on Piratpartiet, going on:
"Advocates of on-line freedom have responded to what they see as censorship of a critical voice. ‘One faceless civil servant decides what web pages may be shown to Finns, and the decision cannot be appealed. Now he has apparently decided that filtering cannot be criticised’, says Tero Tilus of Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFI), a civic group defending citizens’ electronic rights."
Utkik links to a Helsingin Sanomat story which has the NBI’s Lars Henriksson saying the list includes sites, "with content that meets the definition of child pornography" and "links that lead to such pages. Child pornography is defined as pornography depicting children under the age of 18.
"This is not censorship", Henriksson emphasised, says the story, adding:
"The NBI began keeping its list late last year. Now it contains about 1,700 sites. The list is submitted to Internet operators, allowing them to block their customers’ access to the pages in question.
"Operators are not legally required to comply with the request."
(Thanks, Sirja)
Also See:
distribution of child porn? – Matti Nikki vs Finland police censors, February 18, 2008
Piratpartiet – Anti-Internet censorship website placed on police filter list over links to child porn sites, February 18, 2008
Helsingin Sanomat – Anti-Internet censorship website placed on police filter list over links to child porn sites, February 18, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
The Finish police is very dishonest about this. Are they not the one that put the pirate bay on it at some point and then removed it after complaints?
February 19th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Fortunately, TPB has so far been able to avoid censorship in Finland, but finnish counterpart of RIAA, ÃKT, will propably start to campaign for stricter filters.
February 19th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
“Operators are not legally required to comply with the request.”
Yes, technically they aren’t, but during the legislative process it was made perfectly clear that if the operators don’t comply voluntarily, there will be a law that will force them to apply the list.