Finns Outlaw Virus Writing

Ecyrd pointed out that the Finnish Parliment has ratified an amendment making viruses illegal. It's actually not just illegal to use them - distributing them is illegal as well. The most interesting part of the legislation is that apparently isn't just using them - writing them is also a crime.

Comments

Here's the text of the proposed law

[jks]

The Government's proposal is available on the Parliament's WWW site: click here. The URL is monstrous, and I'm afraid it may not be valid forever. However, if you speak Finnish, you should be able to find it by the code "HE 4/1999", or simply by searching for the text "virus".

Since Finnish is not yet one of the major languages of the world, here's my translation of the relevant section of the new law. I'm not a lawyer or a professional translator, and I'm especially ignorant of English legalese--my apologies for the inevitable errors here. Also, this is only the version proposed by the Government, and the law that was actually approved may be different.

Endangering data processing

Who, with intent to harm data processing or the functioning of a data or telecommunications system,

1) produces or makes available a computer program or a series of program commands designed to endanger data processing or the functioning of a data or telecommunications system or to damage the data or programs included in such a system, or distributes such a computer program or series of program commands, or

2) makes available instructions to produce a computer program or a series of program commands that paragraph 1 applies to, or distributes such instructions,

must be sentenced, unless the act is punishable more or equally severely by other law, of endangering data processing to a fine or at most two years of imprisonment.

Malicious intent is the most important point; the program can be anything harmful, not just a virus in the technical sense. Also, a guide to writing viruses will qualify.

Trasmitting is illegal?

[iceT]

Wow! I hope they mean INTENTIONALLY transmitting them is illegal...

Otherwise, over 50% of my company will be arrested...! (not me, of course...)

Something for YRO?

[Ray Dassen]

Isn't this something for YRO? While I despise virus writers as much as the next guy, I find the idea of being forbidden to code something in the privacy of your own system very chilling, in the order of surpressing knowledge/censorship/dystopia.

Newsflash: Torvalds pursued by law enforcement

[Lucius Lucanius]

HELSINKI (Reuters).

In a surprise move, an arrest warrant was issued by the Finnish police to capture Linus Torvalds under the nation's new "anti virus" law.

"The law states that any program that causes danger to data processing systems and is freely available for download by visitors is a virus," said Lt. Hakk Daeta. "The linux kernel poses a danger to Windows, which is a widely used data processing system. Many legal scholars have testified to this. And after Torvalds blatantly put out this virus, millions of PCs have been affected. He must be stopped."

Meanwhile, rumors persisted that Torvalds was seen on the Jerry Springer show, on an episode titled "My PC is too sexy". A man who appeared on the show wearing a paper bag over his head made the suspicious statement that "I am innocent. I just showed how it must be pronounced. It is lin-nucks, not line-ux."

Police are still searching.

Re:hmmm.

[arivanov]

The cite does not post the full document. From what is posted it is actually much more reactionary than you expect.

It looks like the subject is any program that endangers data systems. Ergo this also covers exploits and intrusion software.

The direct result is that if I download/keep intrusion/exploits on my computer in order to develop security fixes for them or test if my machine is vulnerable I am a criminal.

This also renders rootshell, insecure.org and bugtraq illegal for hosting and potentially reading (don't you love netscrape and IE for saving cached copies on your machine ;-) in finland.

Overall the information is rather scarce but this seems to be even worse then the recent AU censorship showdown.

Re: Virussissititusses

[Tom Christiansen]

Virus is a second declension noun (-us, -i, -o, -um, -o; -i, -orum, -is, -os, -is), so technically, its Latin plural would be viri, not virii

Actually, it's rather more complicated than that. You're thinking of 2nd declension masculines. Virus was one of the rare 2nd decl neuters, like vulgus, cetus, and pelagus. These rarae aves did not inflect by changing -us to -i; they were irregular at best, and generally invariant. Virus was also not a count noun, but a mass noun.

It's even possible that virus pertained not to the second but to the fourth declension, which would change the matter as well.

The word becomes invariant in most modern languages, but for some reason, English elected these viruses rather than *these virus as one might otherwise expect from the modern Romance tongues.

You can read Far More Than Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about The Plural of Viruses if you'd like.

Wow.. You're really prejudiced. :)

[Kitsune Sushi]

Ha! At least I qualify my statements. I never claimed to be some "big expert" in Finnish law.. not like you apparently are in American law.

"In Finland, judges are allowed and _expected_ to use common sense; not a common thing in the States."

That's the ignorant thing I've ever heard in my life (well, not really, but it has some ranking there).. The Judicial Branch of the U.S. government is actually one of the best places to look for intelligent decisions. Can you even begin to /imagine/ all of the idiotic laws the U.S. would have if the Judicial Branch didn't rule against them? Ha! Of course, it seems interesting that the people with the most "well-researched" opinions on American law (or the U.S. in general) can't even speak proper English.

The stuff in between is even less worthy of remark..

"But you're american, and there this kind of thing would surely happen. - USA created Bill, Finland created Linus -"

How in the hell does that register in someone's brain? Is Linus the leader of the Finns? heh. Besides, Linus isn't all that remarkable if you don't consider his programming ability. If not for Richard Stallman (or is he Finnish too? yeah right) Linus wouldn't have had a GCC to play with, would never have thought of something like the GPL (if you disagree on /that/ point, perhaps you should do more research on how their political viewpoints differ as far as software is concerned), and it's really doubtful he'd have put together an entire OS by himself without the help of the FSF. By then we'd all be using some flavor of BSD, anyway. heh! As much as I love Linus, all he is is a really good hacker. We have Stallman to thank for the current state of affairs in the software community, for it was his philosophy, whether you agree with it or not, that set it all into motion. And he's.. oh no! American! He's even an atheist. Scary.

At any rate, the U.S. has many people living in it. Rating an entire country by one person is biggotry of the highest order. I'm moving to Canada.. permanently.. as soon as possible. Why? Because I don't think Canada sucks just because I hate Alanis Morisette. heh!