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Censorship Crime Government The Internet Your Rights Online

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."
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Finnish Minister Wants To Expand Pornography Censorship

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07, 2013 @10:38AM (#42820391)

    the way to hell is paved with good intentions

    • by JavaBear ( 9872 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @11:00AM (#42820647)

      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.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07, 2013 @11:19AM (#42820849)

        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.

        • 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.

          So tighten up the law that currently allows screwing 14 year old kids. Problem solved, right?

      • by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @11:35AM (#42821033)

        Agreed.

        Only cowards use censorship.

      • by readin ( 838620 )

        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.

        This is one of the benefits of having a written constitution: There is a clear bright line where the censorship stops:
        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.

        America's First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press - both of which are word media, the significance of which is that word media is necessary to communicate ideas and rat

      • by readin ( 838620 )

        Exactly.

        I really, REALLY hate these cases, because you can't really oppose them without being labelled as a pervert

        I feel your pain on this. I think a business owner ought to be able to hire and fire based on whatever stupid reasons she wants without the government dictating those reasons, But of course you can't oppose the government interference without being called a racist.
        I think the owner of an apartment building or a hotel ought be allowed to decide who she is willing to rent her rooms to but I can't really opposed laws restriction such freedoms without being labelled a homophobe.
        I think a anyone ought to b

    • But the express subway to hell is bad intentions. Or maybe the rails are the bad intentions...

      I'm bad with analogies and metaphors. My point is that greed, ACTA, big content, that will infringe on your rights much more substantially and more rapidly than this will. Fight both of course, but I hate that saying basically. Seems like many people on the internet view hypocrisy as the worst thing ever, that people on moral crusades like this are the worst of the worst, and the saying fits into that. I al
  • Article 34 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @10:39AM (#42820411)

    animal porn

    Watch out, Finnish bronies.

    Päivi Räsänen

    Ok, now that's just umlaut abuse.

    • Ok, now that's just ümläüt abuse.

      Please, allow me to abuse yours...

    • PÃivi RÃsÃnen

      Ok, now that's just umlaut abuse.

      (okay now Slashdot broke completely normal letters so I have to use weird typing hacks. Thanks for sucking ¥$¥[{, Slashcode!)

      Actually it's just vowel harmony, with a handy explanation including a Venn diagram available here:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony#Finnish [wikipedia.org]
      The vowels y, a:, o: can't be used together with a, o, u in the same non-compound word.

      Also those dots aren't diacritics: a: and o: are considered letters like any other.

      This post broug

  • by sackbut ( 1922510 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @10:45AM (#42820467)
    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/ [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.
  • by zugmeister ( 1050414 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @11:03AM (#42820671)
    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!
  • Think of the animals!

  • Remember when ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @11:14AM (#42820801) Homepage Journal

    ... 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.

  • 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.
    • by Cederic ( 9623 )

      Given the worldwide slave trade, and the large number of those slaves forced to work in the sex industry, are you really entirely sure that the violent and/or animal sex you're watching is completely consensual?

      Censorship sucks donkeys but personally I don't download, watch or buy pornographic films or images. Provenance is just not possible and I'm very much against slavery.

      • Sorry, your perfectly correct. I was auto assuming she was referring to "normal" porn aka not slaves forced to have sex porn, I shouldn't of made that assumption!
        • by Cederic ( 9623 )

          She quite possibly wasn't making that distinction.

          My point is that unless I'm present at the filming I can't make that distinction either, so I'm erring on the side of caution.

  • by puhuri ( 701880 ) <puhuri@iki.fi> on Thursday February 07, 2013 @11:28AM (#42820947) Homepage

    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.

  • 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.

  • In older times, movies were subject to censorship.

    The history is long and involved [pictureshowman.com], 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 e

    • Movies are still censored, because ratings are censorship. They aren't there to help audiences make informed choices, they are there to prevent audiences from seeing content. You can't make any movie you want, because it won't be advertised or shown unless it follows the guidelines. Scandinavia has degenerated into feminist extremism, and the goal is to prevent men from seeing sexual content as a way of controlling their thoughts and behavior. A ratings system that constrained the availability of porn to un
    • I'll just leave this here. [paheal.net]

      Pray I don't make you rate more.

  • May be she has acted in one of them and doesn't want the others to see it.

  • by jonfr ( 888673 ) on Thursday February 07, 2013 @01:09PM (#42822151)

    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.

  • 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 ineffect

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