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Finnish Police Board Wants Justification For Wikipedia's Fundraising Campaign

Posted by timothy on from the citizens-united dept.

linjaaho writes "Yesterday, the admin list of Finnish language Wikipedia received a request for comment from the National Police Board of Finland. The Police Board claims that the fundraising message appearing on the top of the Wikipedia pages is illegal fundraising and is punishable by criminal law. The Police Board asks how much money have they raised and ask for justification for the campaign. This is not the first time the Police Board has attacked fundraising; in 2012, a crowdfunded textbook Kickstarter project was delayed by a similar request for comment."

17 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. wikipedia by CurryCamel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That reminds me, I should make a donation.

    1. Re:wikipedia by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It is getting a little annoying. We made our point (in spades I'd say). Dice knows full well if they pull a stunt like that again, they'll have another revolt. I'd say, for now, it's time to back off a little bit.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:wikipedia by Soulskill · · Score: 4, Informative

      Website development is not a quick process. We've been collecting feedback -- not everybody reads Slashdot concurrently, and we don't want to leave out the people who didn't happen to be around on Wednesday and Thursday. After that's done, we need to decide what needs to be done, what order we're going to do it in.. and then the engineers will start hacking at the code. (In reality, they're already hacking at it, to continue implementing features while we work toward parity.)

      That's why the beta site is... beta. And why the Classic site is still around, and will continue to be around for quite a while. I'm sorry it's not as fast as you'd like, but it's entirely incorrect to say we're not acting on feedback.

    3. Re:wikipedia by The_Noid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The beta looks pretty much the same as the last time you asked for feedback on it.
      What feedback did you get back then, and what did you do with it? Because the general impression is that you did nothing with it, and that is why people are angry.

      You should already have this information. You should be able to post, right now, what you did with the previous feedback and what you changed on the beta as a result, and which points you did not change, and why. This is data from months ago. Where is it? Why do you not publish it? Is it because you really didn't do anything with that feedback?

    4. Re:wikipedia by Soulskill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You're right -- we should have communicated it better. It would have been my preference to get closer to feature parity, too, personally. But I do see value in rolling it out to more people, particularly when they're free to switch back to the Classic site. It helps a lot with the statistical significance of the feedback. Our earliest, invite-only alpha got very positive feedback overall. If we'd just gone with that, we'd be in serious trouble.

      I got some numbers for you on the D1 system. The total number of users who have it enabled is very small -- less than 10,000 out of 3M+ accounts.

      However, among active users, the percentage is much higher -- around 10%. And those users contribute roughly 15% of the comments on the site.

    5. Re:wikipedia by Soulskill · · Score: 3, Informative

      I can categorically state that the beta site will certainly get more features and layout changes.

      I can categorically state that redesigns happen, and will continue to happen. We've had, what.. 4 redesigns, now? This isn't our first, and I'm sure it won't be our last.

      As for how long the classic site will stay up: it's not my call, and plans are far from firm. I wish I had more information for you, but I don't.

      I'm really sorry if it doesn't end up in a state that's to your personal preference. But given your comments, I'm not sure how that's even possible. Are you objecting because you don't like the specific changes, or because you don't want it to change at all?

    6. Re:wikipedia by Soulskill · · Score: 3, Informative

      I miss the one-line comments, too, and it's one of the features I've been trying to get bumped up on the to-do list. The commenting system is not finished, by any means.

      Since Slashdot seems to have little or no interest during the past couple of years in repairing broken issues with profile options, I suspect the new version isn't going to be any better.

      That's actually one of the reasons for the redesign. Our codebase is vast and byzantine, and some of it stretches back from more than a decade ago. Rewriting and redesigning will allow us to make some changes and fixes much more easily than we can do currently.

  2. Tyranny by MikeRT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In Finland, it is illegal to plead with audience to raise funds without a special permission issued by the Police Board.

    If that is even half true, that's just tyrannical. Think about it. That means even a church in Finland doing disaster relief cannot call together a congregational meeting and ask for funds without getting a "by your leave, sire" from a bunch of police bureaucrats.

    1. Re:Tyranny by pijokela · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, the point is that you fill an application and get the permit to raise funds. All kinds of non-profit organizations get them all the time. If wikipedia had done that the Finnish police would be quite happy. The problem is that Wikimedia is registered in California and they obviously do not care about Finnish law and I have no idea of how the police think they can force a US organization to comply with the rules if all the servers and staff are outside Finland.

      The issue with the kickstarted texkbook was different because it was not a non-profit organisation. In Finland you need to crowdsourcing very carefully so that it is clear that you are selling a product and not raising money. Jolla did it with their phone so it can be done, but just using kickstarter as it is is illegal, because it is too much like charity for funding a regular company.

    2. Re:Tyranny by Anssi55 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is true.

      Actually, AFAIK (and according to googling) churches in Finland can't even get the permit as they don't satisfy the "yleishyödyllisyys" (general benefit for society) requirement to get the permit. They co-operate with separate associations/foundations exist for that purpose, though, e.g. Finn Church Aid.

      There is a change to the law being planned that would allow churches and universities to conduct fundraisers, but no big overhaul that would actually be needed for the out-of-date law...

      Unofficial English translation of the current Money Collection Act by the Ministry of the Interior]

      Getting a permit requires a corporation or association registered in Finland, so they actually can't give the permit to Wikimedia Foundation even if they applied for one. The permit is also not given to private individuals, so you can't e.g. have a Paypal donate button without violating the law.

    3. Re:Tyranny by zieroh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Forcing" may be a problem, but generally the principle is that a possibly illegal action "happens" where it takes effect, so if people in Finland read the donation requests, then the Finnish police has the right and duty to act on it.

      So worst case, the Finnish police could ask Finnish ISPs to prevent access to a website that breaks the law in Finland.

      NO. This is not just wrong, it's also incredibly stupid. Think about what you're saying: If every website must comply with every law in every country where the website can be seen, then we end up with a web that is the lowest common denominator of all the tyrannical laws in the world. A website in Finland does not get to dictate the terms of a website anywhere outside of Finland. Period.

      --
      People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
    4. Re:Tyranny by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In other words, Finnish police, like police all over the world, are ignorant morons.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. A story to watch... by Smivs · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...from Start to Finnish.

    --
    Smivs on the intertubes!
  4. Cut the "fuck beta" crap already by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People, shut the fuck up already. I hate the beta as much as the next guy, but we have seen enough of these "fuck beta" comments at this point. They do not change the situation right now in any meaningful way. You just make yourself look like an obsessed clown.

  5. Stupid waste of taxpayer money by hydrofix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a Finnish taxpayer I am utterly frustrated by this. It seems like the work of an overly-enthusiastic police official. The Wikipedia fundraiser makes it very explicit that the funds are being collected by a non-profit organization incorporated in California, and subject only to their local laws. Although the fundraiser would be illegal in Finland as-is (Finnish law requires applying for a fundraising permit to discourage fraud), the police and the courts in Finland clearly lack jurisdiction against a U.S. non-profit. The police resources, which they claim to be very scarce due to recent cuts in public sector spending, would be much better spend investigating actual fraud and other crime, where the police and the courts actually have jurisdiction and means to prevent and stop the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice.

  6. Re:They could not get a permit even i they wanted by nurb432 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm also sure the law is used to punish entities that they don't approve of.

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  7. Re:what about linking to comments? by Soulskill · · Score: 4, Informative

    Linking to comments will definitely be re-implemented. It's something that was already on our to-do list before expanding the beta test.