Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 27 February 2008 15:42
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 2
Australian Communications minister, Stephen Conroy claimed last week in support of his drive to mandate ISP filtering in Australia that "ISPs in a number of countries, such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Finland, have successfully introduced ISP level filtering." He may well come to regret that statement.
Conroy made the remark when he announced the release by the ACMA of its first report on Internet filtering. And I took issue with him because: (a) nowhere in the report does the ACMA mention ISP level filtering by these countries; and (b) contrary to what his press release suggested, there was little in the ACMA report to indicate successful ISP level filtering anwhere except in a very limited application using a list of about 1500 child porn sites maintained by the Internet Watch Foundation.
However, as one commentator to that article has now informed me, Finland does apply Internet filtering and it appears to have been a disaster. As the UK's
'The Register' reported on 18 February "Finnish police are blocking more than 1,000 legal websites, including one belonging to a well-known Internet activist, under a secretive system designed to prevent access to foreign sites that contain child pornography, according to a group that advocates for individual rights online."
Coincidentally said activist, Matti Nikki, earlier this month posted on his web site, in English, a summary of the ISP level filtering system imposed by the Finnish government despite legal advice that such filtering was unconstitutional
But don't expect more updates anytime soon. He himself is now under investigation for aiding the distribution of child pornography for agitating against the regime and publishing, on his web site the URLs of child porn sites - read his story for the full details.
He observes: "Being presented as an administrator of an illegal child porn portal and as someone who is distributing child porn images from a web site is one of the most offending things I can imagine. Seriously speaking, people have been killed and murders have been attempted for mere suspicion of paedophilia, so these unfounded accusations could end up having severe consequences for me! Due to grave seriousness of these accusations, and the fact that police authority has been used to present these views to thousands of people who try to visit my site, I think it fits the definition of 'aggravated defamation' as defined in the penal code of Finland."
