Finnish Censorship Expanding

Thomas Nybergh lets us know about the secret list maintained by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, containing an estimated 1,700 foreign "child pornography'" sites. These are mostly in the US and the EU, and certainly not all of them contain child porn or even links to it. Finnish ISPs are required by law to block access to sites on the list, according to The Register. Finland's EFF has information about the block list, which reportedly includes a musical instrument store, a doll store, and a site of Windows tips in Thai. Recently added to the list — which by law should contain only child pornography sites — is the text-only site of a Finnish free-speech advocate who criticizes the censorship law. Evading the ISPs' block is trivial, of course.

Comments

Not "required" by the law

[muzzy]

"Finnish ISPs are required by law to block access to sites on the list, according to The Register"

Actually, The Register doesn't say this. There exists a law specifically crafted due to this child porn censorship program, but it technically doesn't mandate ISPs into participating to the censorship. Well, except for the fact that the people behind the law have made public statements that if voluntary "self-regulation" isn't enough, then there will be such a law. So, it's not exactly voluntary when the ISPs are being threatened, but technically they can claim it's not required by the law...

Anyway, regarding the free speech advocate who has gotten his site censored, that's me. I've written a little bit of text in English about my page and the situation.

It's on the DNS Level

[Coopjust]

For those of you who do not want to RTFA, this blocklist is within the ISP DNS server, so switching to a non-Finnish DNS server or running your own is all that is necessary to bypass it and access the numerous falsely blocked sites.