Finnish Minister Wants To Expand Pornography Censorship 270
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."
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What are we going to miss out on? (Score:5, Informative)
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)...
Enforced only by larget ISPs (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Freedom of speech in the Finnish constitution (Score:5, Informative)
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.