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W3C.org Briefly Censored In Finland
k33l0r writes "The web site of W3C, w3.org or w3c.org, was briefly censored (Google Translation) by at least some of the local ISPs. For an unknown reason the URL was mistakenly entered into the Federal Police's censor database. Some of the Finnish ISPs use the database to filter out questionable content such as child pornography."
Finnish online activist Matti Nikki describes some of the problems with this database-based censorship.
In Redmond, Washington w3.org has been blacklisted for the developers of Internet Explorer for years!
Obviously child-porn websites can't exist without protocol standards that designate how things like HTTP and HTML are to work.
The police who created this list were simply cutting off the head of the beast. Sure, there might be a little collateral damage... but won't somebody think of the children?
Anyhow, mission accomplished. You might even say it has been finnished.
Not in Finland you're not.
This isn't news. Legitimate sites ending up on blacklists is normal. It happens all the time. Might as well report that the sun rises in the morning.
Some child pornographers are very concerned with valid HTML, and linked to their validator on their pages. As a result, it was flagged as related to child porn.
Effi: Finnish police censors a critic of censorship
This shows that they are using DNS based filtering. Very easy to get around, run your own DNS servers and bypass your ISP's DNS servers alltogether.
Note - Liberal use of <sarcasm> tags may or may not need to be applied.
Clearly Finland only approves of mature web standards...
Automation for-the-loose.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
Some of the Finnish ISPs use the database to filter out questionable content such as child pornography.*
To be fair, I think that's a bit beyond questionable... don't you?
(*emphasis added)
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Though noone will likely die or even loose any large ammounts of money or similar due to this particular case, it should still be seen as a clear warning.
As next time it might be something very important that gets accidentally blocked.
Both a direct warning to use a ISP that does not do the filtering(all ISPs in Finland do not use it).
And on second level a warning to reverse the clearly bad law where the Police is allowed to block sites without accountability and
Sorry for the bad quality, it is 5 AM in Finland, and I'm very tired. But I bet I can still beat Google's translation service.
W3C's site on Finnish censorship list
(Updated on 27/9/08 at 19:31: DNA wasn't the only operator affected by the censorship.)
Customers of telecom operator DNA were unable to access the web server of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organisation developing web standards, on Friday evening and early Saturday, because the address of the site had erroneously became included on the censorship list of National Bureau of Investigation.
Many readers of Tietokone magazine informed us late Friday evening and early Saturday that a police information page was opened instead of www.w3.org. The information page says that the target page includes child pornography. The problem was fixed on early Saturday, and currently DNA's customers should be able to access W3C's site normally.
Different operators use the same filtering list provided by the NBI, but different operators may fetch the updated list at different times.
Internet activist Matti Nikki also describes of these observations on his lapsiporno.info -site (lapsiporno == child pornography), which still cannot be accessed by those operators' connections that use the filtering list. (Translator's note: using the list is not mandatory for operators.)
Operators have kept filtering webpages by domain, even though this is not the first time the practice has caused ambiguousness in censorship.
NBI and operators assured last spring, that ambiguous domain-based filtering can be replaced by URL-based filtering, but implementation of this change has been delayed. Many operators have also announced that they will make the filtering voluntary to their customers due to technical problems and negative publicity.
Censorship list in the hands of the NBI
Internet operators gave an estimate for Tietokone magazine last spring, that implementing a precise URL-based filtering system will cost millions of euros. Present domain-based filtering methods are based on domain name redirects or so-called mandatory proxies, i.e. transparent proxies.
Public relationship officer of DNA, Sinikka Veneranta, says that the police removes and adds addresses to the list as they see best, and the operator does no processing for the addresses on the list by itself.
But there are still differences in the time how quickly the addresses on the list will end up in systems of different operators. W3C's address is known to have been end up also to the systems of Mikkeli Telecom Co-operative (MPY).
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
1) Not all ISPs use DNS-based filtering - for example the aforementioned DNA Finland, which uses proxy-based filtering, which in turn is a lot more difficult to bypass.
2) W3C is, AFAIK, still being blocked by MPY.
3) On the first version of the list, less than 1% of the sites were child pornography. Coincidently, a lot of the rest were gay porn.
This is, of course, not at all related to the general opinion on gay people in Finland - in fact, we've already gone half a century without a single forced castration of a gay man!
Boy, does my country make me proud or what.
There have actually been cases of this happening. Basically what usually happens is the children (up to 17) are punished without the law (suspended if done at school, etc) and any adults/companies/etc knowingly involved in the reproduction, distribution and/or storage of the material are slapped (rather viciously) with child-pornography charges.
The children are usually not charged legally, but after their parents, school administration, older siblings, etc get a hold of them, they wish they hadn't done it.
How do they censor by domain name? Do they force/expect everyone to use the ISP proxy server? Do they force/expect everyone to use the ISP name server? Unless they block direct access, it should be easy enough for a user to get around. Of course most users would not know how. OTOH a lot of the really bad pr0n sites don't even use domain names. They use constantly changing IP addresses of proxies running on exploited home/office Windows computers.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Given everything the W3C has done over recent years, nobody is entirely sure if blocking the W3C is censorship or saving the planet from standards bloat.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Every so often, some filters will block samba.org as being in the "Arts & Entertainment" category.
Of course, if you listen to the folks in Redmond, Samba is just for entertainment anyway, not any serious work.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Sorry Guys, I accidentally typed w3c.org when what I what I mean to type was littleboylove.org..
I record my sleeptalking
Matti Nikki's website has been censored from almost the start because he has been speaking against this kind of censorship, and it's problems.
One of the problems he claims is that it will be used against sites which do not distribute child pornography, activist websites, critical of the goverment, or otherwise "undesired" websites. This blacklist was entirely made for child pornography.
His site got blacklisted, proofing the point. No action has been taken, and no one seems to care how Finland aswell is turning into a police state.
To access his website, simply use OpenDNS.org nameservers.
Finland is in a state of masqueraded communism, the taxes are highest in the world and living costs right up there too! For well above minimum wage job, you don't get even twice the amount of money to spend on things than on unemployment checks.
I were born in Finland, and like living here very much indeed, even so much i've denied some REALLY good positions offered to me abroad and stayed in Finland. However slowly i'm starting to rethink the sensibility of staying in Finland, due to things like this blacklist.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
It looks as if we got what I've been dreaming for: Some huge cock-up in this secret censorshiplist of the police, where it is WELL beyond doubt that someone is pulling this list completely off their hat. This only goes to show that huge mistakes like this are all too easy to make and how it takes ages for someone to correct it. THIS is exactly why we need supervision over this kind of list and its makers.
BTW, I'm very glad that at least the people of Finland are taking censorship seriously, whereas other europeans are taking their blinding medicine one site at a time.
Thank you for your corrections. Some of the mistakes, like the extra commas, I noticed right away after posting (It's funny how you can never spot something in preview you spot right after posting). Some of them are clearly due to my tiredness, and my hastiness (I didn't really spend any time checking grammar to get the post out faster). Some are probably genuine mistakes.
Many operators have also announced that they will make the filtering voluntary to their customers due to technical problems and negative publicity.
Did they announce this to their customers, or will they make filtering voluntary to their customers? If the former, you need to rearrange as "Many operators have also announced to their customers that they will..." If the latter, "to" is the wrong word here. I'm not sure the best thing to replace it with.
The latter is the right meaning, and the correct preposition is "for". Sorry for the ambiguousness.
But there are still differences in the time how quickly the addresses on the list will end up in systems of different operators. W3C's address is known to have been end up also to the systems of Mikkeli Telecom Co-operative (MPY).
I suspect you got extra tired here.
Indeed; at that point I just wished to finish the thing quickly.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
Saunalahti provides two unblocked DNS servers.
(http://sensuuri.info/wiki/Operaattorit#_note-0)
Governments should NEVER be allowed to limit freedom X, because some future leader might abuse this ability to limit it in a way that isn't cool. Effectively you're saying that a government should have their hands tied to their back or not exist. Not that I'm explicitly opposed to anarchism in some of its implementations, but I wonder whether you're aware of what you're saying.
"Bi-la Kaifa"
I'm a Finnish tech student and have been following this for a good long time now. Let me give a run-down of what's going on. Afterwards I have a very important question to ask - I'll add that as a reply.
Finland is one of those modern first-world democracies that accords its citizens more freedom than the United States and is smug about it. Like many such states, Finland's government has been taking steps to change that. Case in point: From January 1st, 2008 onward, Finland's Federal Bureau has had the right to list child born websites for ISPs to block. This has been accused of being a sterotypical power grab (and some representatives are openly salivating at the prospect of expanding censorship), but more likely it's just stereotypical gross populism. There was no chance of defeating the bill that had a stated purpose of fighting child porn.
Finland's geek population is united against censorship for a simple reason. It does not and cannot work. This has not been disputed - everyone and their mother has been trying to tell the lawmakers that, including the Federal Bureau before the law came to force. Effective Internet censorship is not possible without an effort on China's or Saudi Arabia's level, and even then Saudi Arabia's leaks like a sieve. I can think of four ways of circumventing Finland's without specialist knowledge, and I got a 1/5 out of my single network course. In fact everything about this is permeated by bureaucratic incompetence to the point that accusing W3C of child porn is not disproportionate. Not only does the censorship only target web pages, which I'm told make up a very small percentage of online child porn, there's no oversight, no way to appeal, and in several publicized cases, no effort to remove the material from the Internet.
Matti Nikki is both a devoted proponent of online freedom and kind of a dick. He published a list of censored sites to prove that censorship makes them much easier to catch with an automated webcrawler without restricting access in any meaningful way. (Later examinations of this list suggest that it has a 2% accuracy rate, but happens to feature the first Google search results for "gay porn.") When Nikki converted the list into links, his site was censored. That is to say, a domestic text-only website was censored using a law that legalized the censorship of foreign child porn. BOOM! Organized resistance!
Censorship made the evening news a couple of times, appeared in some newspapers and talk shows, and sparked one large geek demonstration back in March. "Google is a browser! Google is a browser!" we chanted, quoting the Bureau's chief on why Google has not been censored despite making child porn available as much as Nikki. We had no effect whatsoever. Okay, some ISPs have made censorship an opt-out system and maybe the Parliament will be wary about expanding it. Aside from that, I feel like the biggest achievement involved was me pissing off a bodyguard of the Minister of Communications with my taped-over mouth. Everything about the issue seems to be mired in its morass of utter incompetence that makes it meaningful debate impossible. For instance, the spokesman of a usually benign children-saving organization appeared in a debate and went on for minutes about the way censorship is a valuable statement of principles (as if making child porn strictly illegal wasn't enough) without ever addressing her opponent's statement that censorship does not work, cannot work, and does more harm than good to its cause. That debate sums up this whole sordid mess.
Nowadays Finland's tech-savvy population is quietly simmering, and the local IT building's basement has had a poster of the Minister of Communications in a Nazi uniform since February with no complaints from the staff.
I could certainly write better English than the person you're replying to. On the other hand it wouldn't bear much relation to the original, since I don't understand Finnish. Cut the guy some slack already.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm saying I believe in the First Amendment (free speech and free access to that speech). NOTHING on the internet gets censored. Ever. If you don't like what you see on some Webpage (like playboy.com), add it to your personal block list, so you never have to see it again.
The government should not censor my & everybody else's access to it.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
Yes, and while I tend to agree with your point your reasoning was painfully flawed, effectively being "the government could possibly some day abuse this so it shouldn't exist".
"Bi-la Kaifa"
In fact, we can see here that the WC3 is in fact now over run by the same type of lobbyist tactic used in Washington to over run the Federal government into a corrupt situation that it is now in where the media and the military run the show.
When you add to this surveillance and the dictatorial powers of the president these days to torture and imprison anyone without charge, something George Washington would have had George Bush hung for, we can see that these steps by the WC3 and it's corporate agenda are nothing short of criminal and an offense against free people and free information / free speech.
Finland is in a state of masqueraded communism, the taxes are highest in the world and living costs right up there too! For well above minimum wage job, you don't get even twice the amount of money to spend on things than on unemployment checks.
Some call this socialism, some call this social democracy. The fact is, however, that the social services were seriously cut down in the 90's and markets opened (although they already were open compared to real communist nations). Supporting the unemployed with worthwhile living standards doesn't make the country communist. For some reason the right wing parties are currently forming the government and if I had to choose with the regime being communist or fascist, I'd choose the latter. Trumping the individual rights for the establishment. I can't find the exact numbers, but my best guess is that the support for the unemployed has declined - in real purchasing power - as well as has those people's purchasing power who work on minumum wage or close to one. Evidently your claim of masquareded communism doesn't seem to hold water, this is more like masquaraded fascism. For more proof, check out smash asem demonstration and police response, the rise of police powers etc.
?SYNTAX ERROR
imagine it succeeds to block to all kiddie porn material on the web in a particular country. what happens ?
local pedophiles turn to domestic resources, feeding a mafia to generate the content in-house for them.
censorship doesnt work. the only way is to catch the culprits, the usual way. and thats one reason why you should NOT censor - is there any other great way to catch pedophiles than monitoring kiddie porn content usage ?
Read radical news here
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes that was precisely my point. We never know when we might get another Clinton (who rifled through FBI files to uncover secret information about Congressmen) or Bush (who abused his power to have the FBI listen to everybody's phone calls). We need to limit government power in order to protect ourselves from some future tyrant who will use the Database, not to for legitimate purposes, but for illegitimate purposes.
Today Finland's censorship system might only be used to screen-out child porn & other illegal activities.
But some day in the future another Milosovich might rise-up and use the system to censor websites that oppose his views (i.e. violate the right to free speech). We must guard against the eventuality, because history shows it WILL happen. All governments eventually become corrupt & abusive of their own citizens.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.