Fortunately there’s an easy way to dispose of junk mail – return it to the company that sent it to you. It’s their problem in the first place. Some of them are kind enough to even provide you with a prepaid return envelope. How convenient! Here’s how it works:

The fine Finnish Tiede science magazine sent me a “special” offer in a nice giant envelope. If I subscribe NOW, I could win an amazing car, 50000€ in cash and whatnot. No thanks, I’ll pass this time.

The envelope is full of stuff. There’s a subscription form already filled out with my full name and address, a bonus “double your chance of winning” card and some stickers that you need to stick to the subscription form. How nice.

Here’s what we do next. Crumple up every pice of paper that they sent to you and stuff them in the return envelope like so:

You probably need to step on it in order to properly seal the envelope.

That’s one hell of a heavy and thick envelope, but the postage bill is already paid for by the magazine. This is a nice way of letting the company now that you don’t want them to send you any junk mail. Maybe they’ll leave you alone. Probably not, but at least it’ll make you feel better.

So they’ve known about the problem for three days but aren’t able to fix it? I think that’s pretty incredible. So Sonera seems to think it’s OK for customer’s Internet connection to be down for several days? I’m really pissed off now. This is bullshit. How is it even possible for Sonera to be this bad? It’s almost as if they’re deliberately trying to be the worst Internet service provider in Finland. I’ve said this before, but I don’t know what else to say – they suck, big time.

The problem seems to be over now, “only” a 24h break. Shame on you Sonera. I hope you die a slow and painful death.

I have HOASnet, which is a network provided by Sonera for HOAS (Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region). I could get Welho in my apartment (which is known to work well), but since HOASnet is included in the rent, I expect it to work. I have to try and convice HOAS to change their contract – it’s obvious that Sonera doesn’t give a rat’s ass about HOAS customers.

A year later Mr. Piippo stumbled upon the writing, most probably while googling for himself. He then filed a defamation suit against the writer, whose identity the police were able to trace. The case was closed in the Helsinki Court of Appeal in January of this year. The defendant was ordered to pay €2000 as compensation for the suffering he had inflicted upon Mr. Piippo, as well as €620 in legal fees. It’s worth mentioning that Mr. Piippo gets €600000 a year for serving as Elcoteq’s Chairman of the Board and is also the founder of the company, owning a significant portion of the company. How badly did he need the €2000?

There’s something seriously troubling about this case. A socially unimportant, anonymous writer slandering a prominent public figure is not uncommon in Finland, nor is it usually seen as socially unacceptable. If I walked into a bar in Helsinki, I would very likely hear a lot of people slander and mock politicians, business leaders and celebrities. Nobody would give a flying flock about it. I’m not a lawyer, but commom sense tells me that harmful, possibly incorrect comments about prominent figures by socially insignificant figures, should not be any basis for a lawsuit, unless carried out in a truly spectacular fashion and with overwhelming malice.

What’s interesting about this case is the fact that Mr. Piippo has been convicted of drunk driving. Exactly how inaccurate is it to call a drunk driver “a drunk“? Mr. Piippo has also been convicted of assaulting two women. According to the court Mr. Piippo tied up a 32-year-old woman’s arms and feet with rope and tried to shove tranquilizer in her mouth. He then hit a 26-year-old woman three times with a leather belt (See this article, in Finnish). Sounds pretty nuts, but without any medical record of mental illness, it would indeed be highly inappropriate to call him a lunatic.

The bottom line is that it’s not my place to judge Mr. Piippo, or anyone else for that matter. I know nothing of his family life, his alcohol usage, mental state, characteristics or personality. It would be too hasty to make any judgement about him based on these two sole cases. As a matter of fact I have great respect for his opinions on Finnish economy and politics, globalisation (which he thinks is the greatest peace movement to have emerged since WW2), and his criticism of the Finnish Comprehensive Income Policy Agreement. To simply label him as a drunk lunatic would be a gross understatement of his achievements. He does however, in my opinion, rightly deserve to be criticised for filing the looney defamation lawsuit, which brought him nothing but bad PR and only made the general public all the more aware of his past convictions.

This lawsuit tells me that the Finnish legal system is becoming increasingly American, to the effect that it is is starting to affect freedom of speech. This Americanization of the legal system might actually be good news for me, because now I can finally sue Moccamaster for my caffeine addiction.

Petteri Järvinen has an excellent article on this topic in the printed version of Tietokone magazine 5/2007 (Finnish).

Yleisradion ja MTV3:n tiukka kanta Googlea vastaan on täysin oikea. Ohjelmat ovat televisioyhtiöiden teettämiä ja rahoittamia sekä omistamia. Niitä ei saa kukaan näyttää luvatta. Kun sen tekee taloudellista voittoa tavoitteleva yhtiö, kuten nyt Google, teko on erityisen tuomittavaa laittomana.

TV-yhtiöt ovat maksaneet työntekijöille sovitun palkan ja palkkion ohjelmien tekemisestä. Myös muita kustannuksia on syntynyt. Kun Google käyttää nyt hyväkseen toisen tekemää työtä, sitä voidaan pitää varastamisena. Tällaista ei saa kannattaa. Herättääkin suurta hämmästystä, kuinka varsin moni nettikeskustelija luulee, että kyse on televisioyhtiöiden tahallisesta kiusanteosta, kun kielletään ohjelmien luvaton levitys netissä. Kustannuksien jaosta on kyse lopulta.

Nettimaailma on väärällään erilaisia virityksiä toisten tuotteiden anastamiseksi, mistä Suomessakin esillä olleet tekijänoikeuslain valmistelun aikaiset riidat ovat osoituksena. Luulen, että oikeustaju on kuitenkin tallella suurimmalla osalla kansasta. Eräillä vain oma ahneus iskee niin pahasti päälle, että ohjelmien ja muiden esitettävien tuotteiden tekijänoikeuksista ei paljoa piitata. Onneksi yhä enemmän netissä tapahtuva tuotevälitys on laillista myyntiä ja pelisäännöt ovat tulleet tutuiksi.

I’m sorry I don’t have time to translate the whole comment, but in brief, Vasala agrees with YLE and MTV3. He thinks that now that Google is benefiting financially from the illegal use of copyrighted material on YouTube, it can be called theft and should not be tolerated. He mentions that “The Internet is full of devices whose purpose is to steal the work of others, the row over the new Finnish copyright law demonstrates this well. Some are so greedy, that they don’t care about the copyrights of software or other products.”

To be continued. Vasala does it again – he calls copyright law critics criminals whenever he gets the opportunity. Opponents of the copyright law don’t support piracy, they want more rights for consumers. The Finnish copyright law has various points that need to be corrected. According to the 2006 copyright bill (edited from Afterdawn.com):

• Circumventing copy protections is illegal, even for personal use.
• Distributing tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms is illegal.
• Advertising tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms is illegal.
• Possession of tools that allow circumventing copy protection mechanisms is illegal, even for personal use.
• Guides on how to circumvent copy protection mechanisms can be considered as “tools” and thus are also illegal.
• Worryingly, even “organized discussion” on how to circumvent copy protection mechanisms, is illegal.

So, if you have a portable MP3 player and a copy-protected CD, you can’t legally copy the CD to your MP3 player anymore. Got Linux? Forget about installing libdvdcss to watch DVDs – you’d be breaking the law.

If I want to copy a CD to my MP3 player, does that make me a criminal? Talk about greed. Some are so greedy that they infest their products with copy-protection, just to make sure you won’t be able to use the product. Some are so greedy that they install rootkits on their CDs. Some are so greedy that they sell you DRM products online that could break at anytime. And yes, some hard-bitten evil pirates are so greedy that they download a 2min clip of Kummeli from YouTube for free, instead of bying the 6h DVD-set.

Mediaviikko continued to attack proponents of the new copyright law, labelling all critics as “pirates, criminals and propagandists” in their January 2006 editorial. In May 2006 Mediaviikko decided it was time for another PR-stunt. With the help of columnist Tuulikki Ukkola they defended the tabloid magazine Seiska’s decision to publish pictures of Lordi’s band members. That would have been acceptable, had they not likened Lordi fans with the SS-jugend and islamic terrorists.

Today I was eager to read Mediaviikko’s twist on the YouTube copyright infringement story. Their excerpt read “theft must end!” – so I was guessing they were up to no good once again. I wasn’t able to read their article however, because it turned out that only subscribed readers can now view their content. I could subscribe for “only” 99€. Well forget it.

I find it hard to believe that Mediaviikko will benefit from this. I don’t think that anyone will want to pay 99€ for their service, because:

• Their news coverage is nothing out of the ordinary.
• All the comments are moderated, so they have no real dialogue with the readers.
• Their website just isn’t cool enough. There are no features that you would want to pay 99€ per year for.
• Their reporters don’t blog.
• Their website is way too dull and just way too ugly.

So, auf wieder sehen und bis bald, Mediaviikko.

Hyvä asiakas, Tehdessämme rutiini tarkastusta ohjelmaan joka käsittelee sähköpostimme, huomasimme teknisen vian joka valitettavasti on tuhonnut viestinne sisällön. Onglenma on nyt korjattu ja pyytäisimmekin teitä lähettämään viestinne uudelleen, jos vielä tarvitsette apua Sonyn asiakaspalvelusta. Pahoittelemme tapahtunutta ja siitä koitunutta vaivaa. Ystävällisesti Sony Support support@sony.fi

My loose translation:

Dear customer, While running a routine check on our e-mail software, we found a technical error which had unfortunately destroyed the contents of your message. The problem is now solved and we ask that you send your message again if you still need help from our customer service. We apologize for the inconvenience.

No need to apologize, I’ll take the quality of your customer service into account next time I’m considering to buy a product from Sony. Just wondering, perhaps it was a Sony rootkit that deleted my message? Mybe somebody had popped a DRM infested Sony CD in their mail server. Just a thought.