Image by katchi

On February 12, 2008 an Internet activist’s website was blacklisted in Finland, because it contained a list of domains censored in Finland. That list naturally has links to sites which the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation claims contain child pornography. However, many domains on that list were found to contain no child pornography, or pornography of any kind at all. It’s also worth considering that according to the Finnish law, only sites which contain illegal material and that are hosted abroad can be censored.

It’s very troubling to think that the police has extended the scope of the law on their own initiative. When asked why Google, which links to plenty of censored sites, isn’t censored, Lars Henriksson of the NBI replied “It [Google] isn’t a website, it’s a browser.” It would help if the NBI hired someone who has actually seen a computer… The level of incompetence in the NBI is just staggering.

The biggest problem with the current censorship system in Finland is not in the technical implementation of the system (which is very poor by any standard) but rather in the fundamental nature of any censorship system – nothing is done to get rid of the illegal material, it’s just hidden from view. Out of sight out of mind. The people who support the censorship system aren’t creepy despotic politicians who want to establish an authoritarian regime in Finland (or at least I hope so). Nope, they just want your vote, they just want you to believe they’re fighting hard against child pornography, when in fact they haven’t done jack shit to get rid of the problem.

Because I’m a little crazy, I uploaded the entire list of censored domains (JE’s list version 2.14) to del.icio.us. If del.icio.us is not a browser, then Finland has to now blacklist that site as well

Image by b.franchina

The Finnish Bureau of Censorship has decided to censor the website of a Japanese musical instruments store. No kidding, see this screenshot. Pretty insane. It does raise the question – who the fuck maintains the secret list of censored domains? There’s no one to complain to, nobody is responsible. It’s a secret list you know, made by secret people. Secret people who like wear dark sunglasses and dress in black. If they find a website they don’t like they add it to their little black book. You should not be scared though – they just want to help the children.

To just help the children – you get it? It seems that the only thing that matters to the people in power is that there now exists a mechanism for censoring childporn – whether that mechanism works or not is irrelevant – it’s there and the monkeys who invented it can now smile and say they’ve done everything they can to save the children. Really, they’re just trying to save the children. Did I mention that their cause is good – to help the children? Now who cares if one or two decent websites get censored by accident – there are plenty of other websites on the net!

Oh, also thaimisc.com is now censored. A website dedicated to the Princess of Thailand. No childporn on that site, but it’s censored. Oooops. Everybody makes mistakes, even the secret people. No biggie – there are so many other websites out there that it doesn’t matter!

Way to go Finland – I feel so much closer to North Korea now! Ready, Kafka?