A few months ago, when Wikileaks was blocked by Australian censors for leaking the Australian blacklist (later found to have legal websites in it), an editor famously remarked, “The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.” It seems as though a similar thing is happening with Finnish censors now where a website devoted to transparency was added to the government mandated censorship list.
There’s a rather disturbing report from EDRI where a man was posting some of the URLs contained in the Finnish blacklist on a website. While the operator was interrogated by police and threatened to be prosecuted, no charges ever emerged. Still, the website remained on the Finnish mandatory blacklist. So the operator demanded that his website be removed through the Helsinki Administrative Court. The result? He didn’t get anywhere and his website still remains on the blacklist.
An EDRI editor commented, “the most worrying aspect is that while the court admits that the case is in fact about censoring Mr. Nikki’s personal site, it totally walks over the Finnish constitution and the rights enshrined in it in relation to freedom of speech, without even giving any reasoning why it has done so. This is a grave violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
The case seems to highlight another remarkable instance where transparency and accountability is off the agenda when it comes to web censorship. What this case also makes obvious is that in order to maintain freedom of expression, one needs to rely on the support of other countries through, for example, proxies. Why is this so important? Just ask any Iranian political dissident why internet free speech is important.
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The individuals in charge of maintaining the list, and the one who approved the site be added to the list should be jailed. Nothing short of this action will prevent these kinds of abuse of power.
Only a grassroots political response will rectify this massive problem. The only people talking to politicians these days about the internet is the entertainment industry, and the industry wants everything stacked in their favour. They want the government to endorse and protect their corporate business models, which have no place being in law. It is time citizens started punishing politicians by voting for parties which openly endorse internet freedom. Yes, freedom – don’t call it piracy. It’s freedom. Internet freedom and piracy are NOT the same thing. Piracy happens when people have freedom of speech. Much like porn mags happen when people have freedom of speech. If you want to stop piracy, find a better way to lock the product, or change the delivery system, or something. Use your imagination. But stop trying to solve one thing by going after something completely different.
A totally free and open internet is your right – it’s called FREEDOM OF SPEECH. If people are using that freedom to commit piracy, then the industry will just have to learn to adapt, or the government will have to find another way to enforce the law. But this cannot be done by limiting online freedom.
The problem is also that business and politicians just don’t realize what the internet is – they see it as just another business platform. They didn’t invent it after all. But after what’s happening in Iran now, we can see clearly that the internet is one of our last safeguards against government suppression.
Time to fight for your rights people – if you don’t fight for them, they’re not yours.
This is stupid. The damned people who actually support this type of web censorship should go to ruin.
There is mutual respect and effective collaboration between families and school staff. ,