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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."
This Slashdot submission is about Finland. It's a different country. Different countries have different consitutions. The First Amendment to the US Constitution does not have any legal force in Finland.
Exactly.
I really, REALLY hate these cases, because you can't really oppose them without being labelled as a pervert, this is why lawmakers love to bundle their censorship laws with provisions like these.
Outlaw and block child porn. No one in their right mind can find fault in that.
Protect the children, implements blocks to do that.
Outlaw animal porn, it is after all filthy, right?
Outlaw porn altogether.
Outlaw writings about porn.
Outlaw religious satire
Outlaw religious criticism
Outlaw criticism
Outlaw free speech.
All of these have been seen before in various countries, It is a slope lawmakers won't admit, but it is invariably the end result.
The law actually says the list is supposed to be used against sites outside Finland. Not sites residing in Finland. And even then this particular site has no child porn on it. And why would you block a local site ineffectively when you can just go and take the server out?
Remember the censorship and blacklist has been in use for years. Matti Nikki found out that many of the sites are totally within laws and has been compiling a list of them. Curiously, many of the false positives contained gay porn.
This story is about expanding the censorship, but it's already being used to block other than child porn sites. I'm not quite sure about the situation nowadays but originally there was no way for you to file a complaint about ending up on the list. If I recall correctly, Matti Nikki found out that apparently the police compiling a list does not constitute an official ruling, so there's no way to complain about it.
You know the major ISPs in Finland already block The Pirate Bay? It's painful for me to say, but the good thing in TPB block is that at least it got done by a court order. One way or another, sites like lapsiporno.info and TPB are going to get blocked. Then there are the online casinos, "extremists" and you know, all the Bad guys(tm)...
Tapio 'itn' Nuutinen
I could easily find a fault in outlaw child porn.
For starters, the abuse that comes from it, like people that lose their job and whole their social life because somebody planted child porn on their pcs, which isn't really common, but its not unheard off.
Secondary, children themselves that send pics of them naked to their boyfriend/girlfriend. At the age of 16 or even 14 in many countries they can fuck, but if they send a picture of themselves naked, they are distributing child porn. Its not so much a fault with blocking child porn as their is a fault with the rules made. If you allow sex at 16 but down allow naked pictures of 16 year olds... I mean, legally I could go fuck a 16 year old but I would be a pedophile if I recorded it.
Oh, and lets bring in our friends the RIAA and MPAA, the free distribution of movies devaluates movies and costs the industry several times the BNP of the world each year. Thus if we allow free distribution of child porn, not for profit, we are effectively devaluating the child porn industry, likely bringing them debts of trillions per year, destroying the whole business. At least, that is if the MPAA and RIAA are correct in their analysis, but aint nobody that doubts that.