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Finnish Minister Wants To Expand Pornography Censorship
New submitter jdela writes "Finnish Minister for Justice Anna-Maja Henriksson backs expanding FInland's child pornography blocklist to also include websites with animal porn and largely-undefined 'violent pornography.' Her proposal does not have the unanimous backing of the Finnish government, with Minister of Interior Päivi Räsänen doubting the need to expand pornography blocks. Under current law, adopted in 2006, the Finnish NBI maintains a blocklist of foreign sites linked to child pornography. This blocklist is enforced on Finnish Internet users."
the way to hell is paved with good intentions
So you can't get animal porn and violent porn. Are you missing anything important?
If anything, this act is pure sanity by defining "free speech" not as any speech, but as political speech, which was most likely the original intent.
Pornography isn't speech.
animal porn
Watch out, Finnish bronies.
Päivi Räsänen
Ok, now that's just umlaut abuse.
I guess they never heard of Tor?
I think animals should be able to watch whatever they wish...
The blocklist is a joke that can be circumvented with a minimal effort, largely consisting of dead sites, legal(mostly gay) porn of various flavors and some real head-scratchers like this: http://lapsiporno.info/
That is a page that analyzes and critizises the blocklist itself. It's now removed from the blocklist, but only after an arduous court battle. There is also some info in english.
I agree in that.
However, pornography isn't speech. It's an entertainment product.
If someone were writing books about how we should be able to violently love animals, that would be speech and should be protected.
That's different from a bunch of people wanting their deviant porn, approval of which would suggest approval of deviancy and thus marginalize those of non-deviant lifestyles.
Do you have some science for that?
It seems like you've made a political decision here, which is that every behavior should be accepted.
Not everyone agrees.
Some of us want our kids to grow up in a world where only healthy behaviors exist.
We want people to go experiment elsewhere, and face the consequences of their experiments without dragging us down with them.
You could call us "the control group."
When you can't win on the merits of your argument, call your opponents fascists, Nazis, racists, elitists, rich, privileged, etc.
That's the classic ad hominem attack:
"You shouldn't listen to this guy because he's a fascist!"
In addition, if you're over 13, it's a pointless and recognizably played out tactic.
People who argue like that are the people who slow down society and ruin workplaces by consistently opposing any notion of quality control.
Let's think about this. They're looking at expanding an anti-child porn blacklist to include animal porn and "violent" porn. Unless they're referring to young animals or violence against kids, this is no longer a child porn issue. At this point it's just a matter of a block being put in place because the subject matter offends someone using the umbrella of "think of the children". Never seen that one before!
Is this proof of rule 34?
This is a drawn comic, right? Like in the Mike Diana case?
I think the point is that filmed pornography and written/drawn content are quite different and merit different rules.
I always wondered about the sanity of the jurists who convicted Mike Diana, since his comics were obviously very fringe and not purely for prurient gratification. Same way with the court cases for Ulysses and Naked Lunch
Those however had something of literary importance to contribute. Porn contributes nothing. It's another product.
Think of the animals!
I thought Finland was one of those "free" countries that we always hear about.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... Finland was seen as the world leader in free and open internet communication? This would be bad news anywhere, but coming from .fi it's particularly sad.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I 100% agree with blocking ALL child porn, it's a horribly offensive and wrong media type. However even though I don't take part in Animal or Violence porn they don't fundamentally violate the rights of a non defend-able group. I don't think it's right to block access to something which isn't fundamentally wrong.
The child porn blocking is enforced only on DNS servers. It is not mandatory, so ISP may opt not to block traffic. And of course you can run your own name servers (provided your ISP does not block port 53) even if your ISP blocks child porn.
I would assume in "circles" it is known how to circumvent this blocking. And I guess many will use TOR or some VPN to hide their tracks. DNS-level blocking just makes it more difficult to police to pick the "easy ones" who would not use any hiding techniques if everything would just work by default.
And DNSSEC breaks with DNS blocking, as designed.
Isn't that what you're doing to me?
"Accept animal sex, or you're a fascist!"
You're joking, right? or are you 13?
I don't think obesity is normal or should be encouraged.
The rest of your ad hominem attacks were ignored, since we're adults here.
Section 12 - Freedom of expression and right of access to information
Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression entails the right to express, disseminate and receive information, opinions and other communications without prior prevention by anyone. More detailed provisions on the exercise of the freedom of expression are laid down by an Act. Provisions on restrictions relating to pictorial programmes that are necessary for the protection of children may be laid down by an Act.
Documents and recordings in the possession of the authorities are public, unless their publication has for compelling reasons been specifically restricted by an Act. Everyone has the right of access to public documents and recordings.
Any law like this, no matter how well intentioned, becomes used for something else and gets expanded.
Who wouldn't object to child porn being blocked? Who wouldn't object to violent porn being blocked? Who wouldn't object to animal porn being blocked? Who wouldn't object to gay porn being blocked? Who wouldn't object to all porn being blocked?
These things seem to pretty much always go through scope creep in the worst possible way.
It becomes the morality clause.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
In older times, movies were subject to censorship.
The history is long and involved, a struggle between powerful parties, but the long-and-short of it was that many state and local "censorship boards" would cut movie scenes which were below the community moral standards.
Predictably, this led to inconsistent views applied across wide geographic areas - censors bragging about how they had cut "the kiss" from "Gone With The Wind", and so on. ("You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.")
The end result was a mess. No two areas saw the same movie, artists complained bitterly about the integrity of their vision, movie makers were discouraged from breaking new ground and so on.
Around the 1960s the movie industry adopted a saner approach: allow any movie to be made, and assign content ratings so that people know what to expect.
That put the decision of "what to see" in the hands of the individual viewer - it neatly sidesteps the conflicting viewpoints of community standards. Everyone gets the freedom to make their own decisions, there is no need for centralized control. Community standards are what the community chooses to see.
===================
Perhaps we should adopt a ratings standard for pornography. With computers and the internet, a ratings system should be straightforward; for example, with four levels of explicit and some attached categories for style.
The porn industry might welcome such a standard: it would help their customers better navigate the topics, and reduce accidental outrage. It would present a framework for automated control at a personal level; ie - parents can set the computer to prevent displaying sites/movies with certain ratings to the kids.
The only debate would be in assigning (and enforcing) the ratings.
With a clearly defined set of descriptions, that's a much simpler task than censoring the internet.
Animal porn is totally legal in Finland. Also, Päivi Räsänen is from the Christian party. I'm surprised she's against this..
That is why when you see ostensible "good intentions" which can be reliably predicted to definitely result in bad things, you shouldn't call them "good intentions."
Child porn blocking is bad intentioned. Saying that doesn't mean you're pro-CP; it means that, because you're not a total clueless fucking moron, you know it will be used for things other than blocking child porn. Similarly, whoever proposes it, since he knows that it's not just going to block child porn, is outed as an asshole deserving the same level of scorn as -- you guessed it -- child porn makers.
It's up to you and me to follow up on pointing out that deserved scorn. When someone in government thinks of censorship, we need to set the conditions so that if they come out in public and say that, or introduce a bill along those lines, they should know in advance that they'll be doing the equivalent of publishing a press release "I like to suck kiddie dick."
If censorship isn't yet seen as equivalent to pedophilia, then we're not all doing our jobs.
Animal porn and violent porn are already illegal in Finland. Violent porn is obviously not completely undefined but it may be a bit unclear. I found a blog in Finnish with some references to clarifications. Violent porn that is "playful" or shows explicit consent is legal.
Back in the time when the internet censorship was first proposed in Finland, the governing parties used their power on biggest finnish medias, turning the "protest against censorship" into a "gathering of child porn proposers".
The censorship system got implemented and watching child porn remained legal.
Perhaps banning it would have disturbed the hobbies of the powerful ones.
May be she has acted in one of them and doesn't want the others to see it.
The diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show USA interests working in Finland elections. The party currently in power was the one they favored. Of course, I'm not hedging any bets on how much influence those efforts ultimately had here, but it might make one think.
What a trivial and obvious "point," which defaults to an argument that health standards are arbitrary.
I contend they are not, especially in the case of obesity.
Even rudimentary data collection, doctors' experience, and so on, show us that obesity leads to health problems.
It's not an arbitrary choice.
The same is true of many other factors.
Claiming that reality is subjective is the oldest fallacy in human experience!
What about videos of murders or other non-sexual violence? After all, it's all crimes and if you're going to ban videos of crimes shouldn't you ban them all? Also, should the penalty for having a video of the crime be proportional to the crime?
What if somebody is illegally parked in the video? Should I get a ticket? Now bear with me here... If I have a picture of somebody cheating on their taxes while holding the camera and they point it at a mirror so that you get recursive images, how many fines should I pay? Maybe it should be based on the series that sums the pixel area of the images.
Anyway, I hope they move fast on this. I'm sick and tired of feeling like it's OK to present evidence of some crimes to the police, but not to present evidence of others because the evidence itself is a crime. Let's cut to the chase and make all cooperation with the authorities dangerous.
Semi-interesting anecdote on this case is that Minister of Interior Päivi Räsänen is head of local Christian Democrats, the only Finnish parliamentary party consistently basing itself on religious values (and in the case of her, not the most liberal kind). Yet, she has been one of the strongest proponents of freedom of speech in the current government, even when it comes to things such as pornography, which may seem rather surprising.
My personal suspicions for the sudden interest in expanding coverage of this utterly dysfunctional child pornography blocking by Henriksson and her bureaucrat pals are that the primary point is expansion of coverage, not what would be blocked. Next on line are challengers to local gambling alcohol and gambling monopolies. Action to censor P2P search engines is already strong, although it has this far gone through somewhat more stringent process. For Henriksson, the prime goal is probably reduction of political freedom of speech - there are many topics they would rather like not to be spoken of anonymously among regular citizens. But yes, that's long way off.
It's a good day to extend that thinking.
Allowing (x) to happen does several things:
1. Signals social approval of (x)
2. Increases the frequency of (x) as a result
3. Creates social consequences of (x)
4. Disallows a society where (x) is not present
Let's look at these one by one.
First, your society is signaling to its own member that (x) is not just accepted behavior, but thus is recommended behavior. If we legalize eating raw octopus, we have said nothing is wrong with it; that puts it, in the binary of behaviors described by government, in the "approved" category by not being in the "disapproved category."
Second, that means more people are going to do it
Third, this means that all of us are going to experience the social consequences of it. We are all subsidizing it, in effect, even if we disagree with it.
Fourth, you have eliminated my ability to have the society I want, which doesn't include it.
Let's look at marijuana.
1. We legalize dope. You now have no reason to tell your kids not to do it, since gov't thinks it's OK..
2. People smoke more of it.
3. Whatever social consequences of pot-smoking occur and we all pay for them instead of putting that money toward other things, like space exploration or ocean renewal.
4. I lose the ability to live in a society where pot-smoking is not normal. I may want this for moral reasons, ethical reasons, or even scientific reasons. But either way, I'm deprived.
You've fallen into a fallacy:
You're looking at a change in state of the law, not a change in state of society.
Either way, permission or denial, a change has been effected and that changes the overall experience of the society.
Calling it "freedom" (etc) is just a linguistic and political trope in this case, as it doesn't relate to the effect of what you're describing.
Permissiveness is not victimless. It is simply a change in status, much like denial. Thus, any condition is an imposition in effect.
Currently, our society has a bias in favor of permissiveness, using the "it's not a change to you" argument that you outlined above. However, this is fading, since people are seeing that all these permissive changes have long-term social consequences starting with the perception of approval.
Hope that cleared it up for you.
Do you really think the world is this simple?
Allow everything then; now you've got maximal freedom and all our problems go away.
Right?
Oh -- that's not so. How could that be? It turns out that societies are defined by their values, not by allowing everyone to do everything (having no values).
The current dogma approved by your government, media and social group is that allowing any behavior is good, and restricting any behavior is bad.
But life isn't that simple, unless you're talking about a loyalty test to an authoritarian regime.
This blocklist does not make this problem of illegal child porn go away. Something needs to be done about it directly (taking the web sites in question down is a good start). The blocklist just makes it hidden. They do nothing to solve this criminal activity or prevent it. Something of that nature needs to be done. Current "solutions" are no solutions at all.
What she is suggesting does in fact not solve anything and never has solved anything.
Use the traditional test: is it only for prurient interest (titillation) or does it offer some other content?
The form of ad hominem:
"My opponent is an x, so his argument cannot be valid."
Here's your statement:
Totalitarian ideologies also prohibit murder; should we legalize murder then to avoid being totalitarian?
Your argument presupposes that the source of totalitarianism is censorship, when in fact the source of totalitarianism is total state control.
Similarity in argument doesn't make a valid comparison.
Then you reveal for the second time you don't recognize the ad hominem format. This is the statement you claimed was an ad hominem attack:
Doesn't fit the form. An ad hominem of the same would be:
"This guy is 13, so his argument can't be valid."
You've confused prohibition and a lack of honest answers.
I suggest honest answers, and a strong signal that certain behaviors are seen as bad for a reason.
Letting kids "make up their own minds" before they're ready results in the kind of situation you found yourself in.
When I had questions about sex, I did what any good nerd would do... I hit the encyclopedia and then, some of the more detailed sources in the library. It wasn't difficult to find and had no prurient content, thus didn't mislead me as you misled yourself.
Don't blame prohibition for where you wandered off track, and definitely don't do the same to your kids by enforcing no standards in some kind of tantrum against the authority you blame for your own mistakes.
I realize you're probably just typing in a meme by reflex action, but here's the definition:
Now let's look at the rest of what you typed:
The point is that many of us don't want to live in a society where deviancy is the accepted norm. Legalizing animal porn takes that away from us.
I summarized your statement in the title, and turn it around on you:
You're telling me I have to live around animal porn in a society that demands it be normal. Who gives you that right?
See: you're stupid.
Porn doesn't assault people online. It doesn't jump out from the shadows. Porn doesn't stalk people and attack them from behind. In fact, the viewer has to take some deliberate action to end up with porn on their screen. If porn itself isn't the problem, is it the children? Are they what we are trying to save? In that case wouldn't it be better to watch who goes to child porn sites and then investigate them to see if they are abusing children? Wouldn't that protect far more children than trying to ineffectually block porn sites? You CAN stop bank robbers by closing all the banks, but wouldn't that be a stupid solution?
You said:
In reference to my statement:
I'm going to just leave this here to show how radically different the two are.
Your entire argument rests on that misreading. I am sorry to inform you of this, but your argument just died.
I think it's interesting no one posted all the good things that were going to come of this. What you posted were fears (OMFG fascism) and somewhat circular reasoning about permissiveness.
No one mentioned anything good.
In substance, not much different than the original 1st amendment:
Basically, you can express any idea you want, no matter how unpopular.
It has never had any bearing on pornography, which isn't an idea. It's just entertainment.
It's a violent pornography
Choking chicks and sodomy
The kind of shit you get on your TV
Now this is getting silly:
Decisions that affect the health of a society are different from the type of mundane shopping decision you're arguing. Do you really think drug use is on par with what type of car you drive?
The main consequence is that it determines what type of society you live in: does it have standards and values, or not?
I think you're confused here as well. The point of a free society is that you're not compelled to do things against your values. That doesn't mean there are no rules or standards. If anything, you've shown why our society has become "un-free" with the adoption of forced pluralism.
Argument by appearance: found nowhere where the intelligent gather.
Because it's not arbitrary. Some things work better than others. A society of obese people is going to have health problems.
Further, you could argue that we need to break up into sub-societies for people to have their own standards. But that sounds awful like the states' rights argument the Confederates were advancing.
Neither fits the form. Now you're arguing like an AOLer.
If ABC news dedicated its resources to publishing nothing but Nazi propaganda, and started gaining in popularity, would you have the same view?
Thank you for that addition. It's an important point. In the US, anyone with enough popularity can lobby for their propaganda to be taught in schools, which then causes large interest groups to drown out legitimate opinions.
It reminds me of something Stephen Pinker said in The Blank Slate, or maybe it was Socrates in The Republic. When something gets repeated enough, it builds inertia because people are personally terrified of not being part of the trend, and yet aren't brave enough to speak their minds otherwise, which is the one thing that could deliver them from their terror.
This has been discussed for a long time, create an XXX or PORN domain. Block all porn on .com .net .org, etc... and "encourage" those domains to be used. Then it'd be a snap for each individual household to block or allow that content. Just like if I don't want to see that stuff in the book store or video store, I just stay out of that area. Same idea for the internet.
I know it's not that black and white, b/c who decides what needs to be on the new domain .... but it's an idea to talk about anyway.
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
You are telling me that it's great if someone wants to publish violent animal sex pornography; I am asking if the same applies to propaganda of another sort, and to make it interesting, presupposing that it was done with the force of commerce.
Actually, to look at it more clearly, you're arguing for people to create objectionable speech. I'm suggesting that it will change society in ways that may not be positive. To a bigot, their preaching of bigotry (let's pick a neutral target and say they are bigoted against global warming) is harmless to you. You, on the other hand, don't want to live in a society where that is the norm.
Finnish Minister Wants To Expand Pornography
Censorship.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
> maintains a blocklist of foreign sites linked to child pornography. This blocklist is enforced on Finnish Internet users."
The list contains both foreign and local sites. The list contains several non-child porn sites (perhaps even most of them, hard to tell because the list is secret). The blocklist is enforced only for some Internet users, e.g. I'm not affected by it.
It is also worth mentioning that it is impossible to get off the list (the only known person who has tried it, has been trying to get off the list for almost 5 years, without a success. ). Quote "2011-05-23:
The administrative court recently ruled that the police should've removed my site from the list when I asked them to. However, they also say police made no error when they chose not to remove me, so I'll have to pay the legal fees myself. The police is apparently considering to appeal the decision and I'm still on the secret blacklist"
From: http://lapsiporno.info/
too much. I bet that mother fucker has calluses on his dick.
I wonder if faggot porn is banned. If it's not, it should be.
is finnished.