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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.
This was on Wikipedia's front page the other day.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Is there an open blacklist like this. Those of us who do use net porn are often afraid of accidentally clicking a link to something illegal like this. Once it is in your cache, you go prove you are innocent. So it'd be nice to have a blacklist of sites for personal use. It would be even better if it were like a custom DNS service which would not resolve bad sites and I were free to choose to use it.
Simply put, this entire list is a disgrace to the nation. The entire list was lobbied through by appealing to simple-minder think-of-the-children rhetoric without any thought given to the implication of this list. Anyone even remotely knowledgeable about technology in gneeral knew that this idea could not possibly work and would end up being abused in no time flat.
The mere existence of this kind of censorship disgusts me.
The references to and instrument store and doll store both relate to same blocked domain. Specifically, it's a whole Japanese ISP's web server. One of the users probably has something the Finnish Police doesn't like, and that's all it takes to block the entire server.
The reference to "Windows tips in Thai" is to a whole ISP's server blocked in Thailand. They provide free web boards, so it's fairly reasonable to assume that those free boards are used to post child porn links. Child porn groups tend to communicate over forgotten guestbooks, forums, they use freesites to publish stuff, etc.
The whole point is that these legit sites are collateral damage, and the police doesn't care the slightest about it. As a matter of fact, the police has released a FAQ which quite directly suggests that since there are so many sites on the internet it doesn't matter if a few of them are blocked.
-- Matti Nikki
Actually, Someone's been checking through the whole list I've published and it now appears perhaps ~15 out of 1000 might be child porn. I haven't verified this yet and I'll have to go sleep soon too so I'll do it later. Still, that's a fairly small portion. I might have to back down my claims that 99% appear legit and say that 98.5% seem legit :)
-- Matti Nikki
This whole situation reminds me of Duty Call formations when I was in the Marines. Before putting into a port, they get all of the enlisted together and tell us what places not to visit. Sometimes we would take notes so we could get to these places faster.
Having a list of child pornography sites would seem to be a bad idea simply because now those sites are getting free advertising. Maybe they should think about encrypting the list or something.
I've tried to discuss this with many others at Helsingin Sanomat message board. But it is hard because when ever you try to convince someone that this isn't the right kind of tool to prevent child porn you get labeled as a child porn consumer or even a pedofile. Those who understands this issue can't do much and those who don't are closing their eyes and ears and shouting I CAN'T HEAR YOU, YOU SICK BASTARD.
I'll think I write nice letter to minister Katainen about this. I have Kokoomus membership card in my pocket and I live in Pohjois-Savo, as does Katainen, so hopefully he reads my mail. But I'm not sure how to phrase the mail so that it is polite and informative at the same time :) I'll have to think about this a little ...
You don't know what you don't know.
Norway has the same kind of list.
It seems to be more lenient, though. Lapsiporno isn't blocked, and out of a sampling of the least offensive sounding sites, "only" three out of eight were blocked.
I would like to point out that the censorship law says nothing about links, or listing sites with links. And in the law itself its purpose is said to be to promote measures which can be used to prevent access to foreign child porn sites. Lapsiporno.info is neither foreign nor contains any child porn.
Also let it be known that Matti Nikki (muzzy) himself has actively reported actual child porn sites before, and some of them have been closed. Some was active even a year after reporting it. Of course, these sites are not Finnish.
The EFFI statement linked in the article is very thorough. In this case there really can be only one bias: the law is bad and the way of enforcing it is even worse.
Tapio 'itn' Nuutinen