There is an escalating row currently in Finnish blogosphere and media about Internet censorship: there is now a special law in Finland which allows police to create secret lists of materials that they deem ‘inappropriate’ with some criteria and other, and ISPs are required to block access to those addresses. The law was pushed through with arguments of blocking child pornography, but now it seems that also other kinds of pages, or entire domains, are being blocked, and police declines to give any information about the censorship lists, or publicly defend their decisions. You can read more in Finnish from blogs of Jyrki J.J. Kasvi, an MP, and Petteri Järvinen, an IT author, who comment on the blocking of access to activist Matti Nikki’s anti-censorship site. An issue of fundamental rights, and I hope there will be more serious discussion about the overall ethical problematics of censorship after this.
frans goes blog 