Finnish Court OKs Censorship Of Anti-Censorship Site

from the 'stop-pointing-out-our-failures!' dept

Government entities are irony-proof, especially those most humorless of government entities -- the censors. Case in point: the Finnish Supreme Administrative Court has decided that the Finnish police did nothing wrong when it added an anti-censorship site to its blacklist.

Getting from point A to point Z is mildly tangled and somewhat humorous, especially from a distance (i.e. not being the site's owner). Here's what happened. In 2006, the Finnish government enacted legislation that added sites distributing child pornography to a national block list. All well and good, except that, as most censorship efforts do, it also blocked some sites not distributing child porn.

One Finnish citizen decided to track the sites which were being blocked illegally.

As the process of blocking the sites is done in secret and the list of blocked sites has never been officially made public, an individual, Matti Nikki, decided to create a site called lapsiporno.info (translates as child porn dot info) criticizing the secretive process and the fact that there's no way to make an official complaint about one's site being listed on such block list. He also hosted on his site a list of sites known to be on the list, but didn't contain any child porn material whatsoever.

So, as government agencies do, it assumed a site with "child porn" in the name hosted child porn. It also looked at the URLs contained on Nikki's site, compared them with its own list, and decided he was linking to child porn. Bang. Onto the list he went.

Nikki sued the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) for including his non-child-porn-hosting site on its block list. The first decision went his way, but not because he wasn't hosting illegal content.

[T]he Administrative Court of Helsinki ruled that inclusion of his site was illegal on the grounds that the block list was meant to block only sites hosted outside Finland (whereas Nikki's site was hosted and maintained in Finland).

But the higher court stepped in and overruled that decision, using an amazing amount of terrible logic.

The court found that as Nikki listed the links to the sites that are known to be included in the censorship list, his site was aiding people to find them. It found that even the fact that Nikki's site contained material that was clearly legal (articles criticizing the censorship legislation), the interests of the children must come before freedom of speech. It also stated that if it were to rule Nikki's site legal on the grounds that it hosts legal material, other child porn sites could also circumvent the legislation by adding non-child porn material to their sites.

That's how that works out. No one bothered to verify whether all the sites on NBI's list contained child porn -- it was just assumed they did and that Nikki's linking was illegal. Why? The second sentence explains it all.

"...the interests of children must come before freedom of speech…"

A completely legal site, one that pointed out errors in the NBI's block list, was shut down for the children. Nice. And then the court went even further claiming that if it ruled in favor of Nikki, existing child porn sites could attempt to be taken off the block list simply by adding legal content. If that's the case, the block list is a complete sham. Either a site hosts child porn or it doesn't. If a site hosts child porn but adds an unrelated blog, it still hosts child porn. If that's the standard for the block list, enforce it.

A site that doesn't host child porn, but points to other sites being wrongfully censored, STILL DOESN'T HOST CHILD PORN. Enforce the rule. Don't contort the rule just to shut down a site that criticizes NBI's overblocking and then claim the censorship effort is in the "interest of children."

If you're against sloppy filtering efforts, you're for abusing kids. That's the message this sends.

Filed Under: anti-censorship, censorship, finland, internet

Interesting Move: Peter Sunde, Of The Pirate Bay & Flattr To Run For EU Parliament

from the raising-visibility dept

The Pirate Party of Sweden famously got two MEPs elected to the European Parliament in its last election, and now in an interesting move, Peter Sunde -- probably best known as the former spokesperson for The Pirate Bay -- has announced that he'll be running for the European Parliament in Finland (he was apparently born in Sweden but his ancestry is Finnish). After the Pirate Bay -- which many people incorrectly assume is connected to The Pirate Party -- Sunde went on to found Flattr, a system (which we use here) that helps content creators make money.

I've discovered that people who have never met Peter tend to be very quick to jump to conclusions about him -- almost always entirely incorrect. Amusingly, when I first met him, a few years back in Berlin, he and I were sitting in "the green room" of a conference right before a panel that he was supposed to be on. All of the other panelists on his panel had entered the room and were discussing the panel across the room, without knowing that Peter was sitting right there talking to me. So they started talking about him, and someone explained that "the pirates now hate Peter, because he switched to the other side with Flattr." Of course, nothing is further from the truth. This was never about "sides" but about reality. Peter has always been incredibly focused on recognizing what reality is and trying to respond to reality -- rather than making up artificial boundaries and pretending a fake world must exist where it does not. I'm not sure how well that will play in actual political situations, but it would be great to see what would happen.

The one bit that surprises me, frankly, about the decision to do this via the Pirate Party is that, in the past, Peter has actually distanced himself from The Pirate Party in the past, saying that he preferred other parties, such as the Swedish Green Party. Either way, in my limited experience with him, Peter has always been one of the most perceptive and thoughtful commenters on the state of technology and its impact on society and culture. I've come away from our conversations feeling like I understood a lot more about the world than when the talks started. I recognize that for many who come with pre-conceived notions, it will be easy to try to dismiss him, but for those willing to take a chance and see what he actually has to say, there is tremendous value in hearing what he has to say -- and in a political world, it would be great to see what he could accomplish.

That said, there is the outstanding matter of the ruling against him -- and the fact that he's been sentenced to jail, though it's still never been made clear when or how he will be expected to serve that sentence. I would imagine that somehow, that issue would need to be clarified if his candidacy actually gets any real momentum.

Filed Under: eu parliament, finland, peter sunde, pirate party
Companies: flatter, the pirate bay

MPAA Accused Of Tampering With Evidence In Key Copyright Case In Finland

from the above-the-law dept

Once again, it appears that folks in the MPAA seem to believe that they are completely above the law. In an interesting revelation in a big copyright case in Finland it came out during the trial that important evidence was tampered with, and when asked about it, IFPI officials who were in the courtroom said that it was an MPAA exec who was in the room with them when it happened, though they declined to name the exec.

The case involved some servers in Finland that were apparently used by a warez group there called Angel Falls. The tampered evidence came out when an expert investigator was on the stand, and showed some video of his investigation. However, the defense pointed out that the username in the video did not match up with the relevant entry in the logfile, at which point it was revealed that the MPAA exec had tampered with the evidence in an attempt to cover the tracks of the "user" who was a part of the investigation. According to TorrentFreak's summary of the events:

The video, a screencast of the investigation, showed a particular username accessing an Angel Falls FTP server. However, the corresponding text log for the same event showed a completely different username.

“When the IFPI investigator was asked about this he acknowledged that the names did not match. He said that the Finnish anti-piracy people and IFPI had collected the information together, but there was also an MPAA executive in the room while the evidence gathering took place,” Hietanen explains.

The IFPI investigator was then asked to reveal the name of the MPAA executive. He declined, but did offer an explanation for the inconsistencies in the evidence.

In an apparent attempt to hide the identity of one of their spies, the MPAA executive edited the evidence gathered during the session.

“The IFPI investigator handed over the evidence material to the MPAA senior executive who then changed the text file before the anti-piracy organization handed over the evidence to the Finnish police,” Hietanen says.

Incredibly, the MPAA exec had not told the defense of this change, which is why it came out in court when they spotted it. This has resulted in the police starting an investigation into possible evidence tampering (they found 10 changes to the files), as well as the overall case ending in a less spectacular fashion than the MPAA and IFPI had clearly hoped. Two of the defendants were acquitted entirely, while the other four were given suspended sentences. The plaintiffs' request for 6 million euros also was knocked all the way down to merely 45,000 euros.

Still, the really incredible thing here are the actions of the MPAA and their continued apparent belief that they are entirely above the law, so long as they're pursuing someone they feel is involved in copyright infringement. It calls into question the "evidence" presented in other cases as well.

Filed Under: finland
Companies: mpaa

Proactive Blackout: Finnish Websites Go Dark To Promote Copyright Reform

from the the-best-defence dept

A little over a year ago we wrote about Finland's new Citizen's Initiative act, which requires parliament to process any bills proposed by the public if they get 50,000 signatures of support, and the Open Ministry website built to make the process easier. Then, earlier this year, we noted that one of the bills gaining steam on the platform was a call for new crowdsourced copyright laws.

Now, TorrentFreak is reporting that a bunch of Finnish websites went dark yesterday as part of a blackout intended to promote the citizen's initiative, which currently has a little over 27,000 signatures. The copyright proposal itself contains lots of sensible ideas:

The proposal addresses this concern by making small scale piracy a fine, at maximum, rather than its current maximum of two years in jail. By moving down the maximum penalty, the Finnish police would be more limited in their investigation methods - they won't be able to spy on citizens online, or confiscate property.

The remaining main points in the proposal include allowing fair use of copyrighted material for teaching and research, and adds fair use rights for parody and satire, which is unclear in the current legislation.

Artists' rights would also be strengthened, allowing artists to license their works through open licenses. Additionally, if a fan of an artist is being proscecuted, then the artist will have the ability to tell their representative organization to stop suing on behalf of their content.

Many decisions involving copyright in Finland are discussed and decided within a Copright Council, which includes representatives from the old media industries, such as the TV and recording industries. The proposal would also add internet operators, software, and gaming industries into that mix, as the scope of copyright expanding all the time.

Also, the proposal would clear up the language when it comes to personal video recording systems, which will assist startups, like BooxTV, working in this field, and perhaps allow for new innovations in this area.

It's fantastic to see the SOPA-style blackout tactic being employed proactively, to push for positive reform, rather than just as a defensive play against copyright maximalists. While a localized blackout is never going to have the impact of something as widespread as the SOPA protests given the global nature of the internet, here's hoping it gains enough traction to put these much-needed ideas about copyright in front of the Finnish parliament.

Filed Under: blackout, finland

The Pirate Bay's 'Lawsuit' Against Anti-Piracy Group More About Exposing Double Standards In Enforcement

from the looks-like-it dept

We stayed away from the story that made the rounds last week, concerning the claims that The Pirate Bay was going to file a lawsuit against Finnish anti-piracy agency CIAPC for setting up a site that parodies The Pirate Bay, using a copy of TPB's stylesheet. Knowing how TPB operates, we assumed that this was not an ordinary situation, even as eager reporters mocked the site for its apparent hypocrisy. Having seen how TPB has acted in the past, we figured there was more to this, and this week the details are starting to come out.

TPB has now said that it has reported the parody CIAPC site to the Economic Crime Unit. Why? Well, it appears the whole thing is really about exposing the double standard by Finnish law enforcement. You see, recently, Finnish prosecutors went after a parody site by Finnish "software developer, researcher and internet activist" Matti Nikki. So, TPB, is noting that it just wants to see the law applied equally (by which it means, showing how farcical the law is, knowing that law enforcement will never prosecute this):

“In a similar case, the prosecution and the Helsinki Court of Appeals have found that a parody site can violate the moral rights of the original author. Changing the logo or making slight edits to the text are not enough to remove this liability,” they informed the police.

The Finnish EFF supported this claim, explaining to TorrentFreak (in the link above) that seeing how prosecutors reacted would be quite telling:

“It’s interesting to see, how the police reacts to Pirate Bay’s demands. On facts the case is indeed very similar to Matti Nikki’s case, in which the prosecutor decided to bring the charges on behalf of Save the Children.

“The law should be the same for everyone so now the objectivity of the Finnish police is going to be tested. Anyway as others have already pointed out, even if Pirate Bay loses the case, it’s a victory for their cause.”

So, while others were mocking, it appears there was a much more serious thought process going on here. One of the following possibilities are likely to occur:

• Finnish prosecutors do absolutely nothing, thus exposing their complete double standard in enforcing the law.
• A lawsuit happens, and TPB "loses" the case, as it's an obvious parody situation which should be allowed -- and thus, TPB reinforces the protections for parody.
• A lawsuit happens TPB actually wins the case, which most people would equally recognize as preposterous after seeing the initial press coverage of the story.

It's looking like this was, yet again, a more clever move than many gave them credit for initially.

Filed Under: copyright, double standards, finland, law enforcement, lawsuit, moral rights, parody
Companies: ciapc, the pirate bay

Finnish Activists May Force Parliament To Vote On Crowdsourced New Copyright Law

from the us-lobbyists-aren't-going-to-like-that-at-all dept

Well this is interesting. Kevin Collier over at DailyDot has alerted us to the news that Finland may be on the way to crowdsourcing a new copyright law. Finland has an "Open Ministry" effort that requires the Parliament vote on any citizen-proposed bill that gets 50,000 signatures within a period of six months. It's similar to the US's "We The People" petitions, except rather than getting back (maybe) a bland and useless "response" from the executive branch, the Parliament has to actually vote on the drafted legislation. The group Common Sense in Copyright has put forth a proposal entitled To Make Sense of the Copyright Act, which launched with tremendous fanfare in Finland, such that the proposed bill -- which is still being drafted -- is "by far the best-rated and most-commented" bill on the site. The current draft would push back on copyright law extremes:

The bill's aims are sweeping, and includes reducing criminal penalties for copyright infringement, broadens the definition of fair use, and increases citizens' ability to digitally copy their own material for fair use.

If it reaches the 50,000 vote total, you can expect big content lobbyists to go crazy in protesting how horrible all of this would be. But, it sure would be an interesting case study to see how those in Parliament choose to vote on a bill so widely supported by the public.

Filed Under: copyright, crowdsourcing, finland, reform

HBO's One Attempt At A Standalone Digital Service Sucks

from the surprise-surprise dept

In my recent post about the fragmentation of online television, there were a few aspects and details I left out because they seemed worthy of a separate, closer look. One is the oft-forgotten fact that HBO does indeed offer one lonely digital-only subscription service... to customers in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. That program was announced last year and seemed like a promising step for the notoriously cable-dedicated HBO—but the customer feedback is coming in, and the results are not encouraging:

A list of complaints include HD content is (was?) only available on Samsung Smart TVs, meaning you were only given SD quality when streaming through your computer or any other device. Same goes for surround sound and 5.1, which are only available through the Samsung TV app. Other complaints I've heard includes buffering problems with the Widevine plugin (at standard definition), and lack of Apple Airplay support. The product is available as iOS and Android apps, but Xbox and Playstation apps are still said to be under development.

The online UI is nice to look at but was poorly designed; initially HBO only allowed you to search for TV shows by alphabetical letter. The results were underwhelming and exaggerated how little content HBO was offering.

...

It should be noted that you're not given access to the full back catalogue, several classics are not available such as Deadwood and Oz, which apparently have some copyright restrictions.

Some might claim it's still a good deal at €9.95/month, considering most people can't access any of these shows legally without a full cable package. Of course, Netflix only costs €7.99/month in the region, and has a larger selection, which makes the price a little less impressive. Then there's the fact that HBO initially promised much, much more:

• Every episode of all HBO series available online
• All new episodes available within 24 hours of the US premiere, with local subtitles (dubbing is rare in the Nordics, foreign TV shows and movies are usually subtitled in the local language)
• Works on practically all devices: smartphones, tablets (Android, iOS), computers (Windows, Linux, Mac), video game consoles (PS3, Xbox), Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players, and Sonera IPTV service
• Full HD 1080p picture quality
• Surround sound

Compare that to the list of complaints, and you realize HBO isn't doing a great job of living up to the expectations it created. Then there's the other truly insane catch: customers are locked into a 12-month contract, after which they must give 3-month notice for cancellation. Yeah. Moreover, the terms stated that simply logging into the service once waives your ability to cancel it because you're not satisfied (despite using the service being the only way to know if you are satisfied). After facing significant criticism for this move, HBO backtracked and offered subscribers the chance to use the service until the end of this month without a longer commitment—but only those subscribers who also signed up for the HBO Nordic newsletter. Classy.

It's no real surprise that HBO's first attempt at a standalone online offering is a disaster. HBO approaches the internet with extreme trepidation, but revolution requires gusto. Digital distribution—especially when it comes to competing with piracy—is a go big or go home endeavor. Or... go halfway, and watch your customers go elsewhere.

Filed Under: denmark, digital, finland, norway, sweden, television
Companies: hbo

Early-Morning Raid Sent To Confiscate 9-Year-Old's Winnie The Pooh Laptop For Downloading Music

from the a-question-of-priorities dept

One of the biggest problems with the current approach to dealing with alleged copyright infringement is the totally disproportionate nature of the action undertaken in response to it. The "three strikes" collective punishment of households that is available in France, New Zealand and South Korea is one example of this. From Finland, we learn about another completely over-the-top action:

CIAPC, the company that had The Pirate Bay blocked by ISPs in Finland, tracked an alleged file-sharer and demanded a cash settlement. However, the Internet account holder refused to pay which escalated things to an unprecedented level. In response, this week police raided the home of the 9-year-old suspect and confiscated her Winnie the Pooh laptop.

The specific details are worrying:

Tuesday morning the doorbell of the family home rang around 8am and the man, who works in the hospitality sector, had quite a shock. Police were at his door with a search warrant authorizing the hunt for evidence connected to illicit file-sharing.

This kind of early-morning raid would be more appropriate for dealing with serious and dangerous criminals than 9-year-old girls (barely even mentioning that the girl's father claims her attempts at downloading failed, leading them to go purchase the music legally anyway). Similarly, the fact that for such a trivial case the account-holder's name and address were obtained from the ISP, and a search warrant issued, shows how out of control the law has become in this area.

Under the malign influence of the copyright companies, it would seem that the police force is now little more than a bunch of heavies sent around at ridiculous hours of the day to frighten people who refuse to pay the arbitrary sums demanded. It's hard to square this colossal waste of police time and public money with the deadly threat of terrorism that we supposedly live under: is intimidating members of the public in this way really such a priority for the Finnish state? It's also disappointing to see the legal system in Finland and elsewhere acquiescing in this terrible perversion by powerful lobbies of what is supposed to be even-handed, proportionate justice for all.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: excessive, file sharing, finland, kids, laptops

California To Commission 50 Open Textbooks For 2013; Finnish Teachers Write One In A Weekend

from the just-can't-wait dept

Techdirt has been following open textbooks for some time now, and 2012 looks to be a bumper year for them. Here, for example, is a major initiative in the US:

California college students hit with tuition increases in recent years will get a little financial help after Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation Thursday to create a website on which popular textbooks can be downloaded for free.

Twin bills by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) will give students free digital access to 50 core textbooks for lower-division courses offered by the University of California, California State University and California Community College systems. Hard copies of the texts would cost $20.

The bill establishes a new California Open Education Resources Council, which will be required to choose the 50 core textbooks and then:

to establish a competitive request-for-proposal process in which faculty members, publishers, and other interested parties would apply for funds to produce, in 2013, 50 high-quality, affordable, digital open source textbooks

which would be released under a cc-by license. The move is likely to be significant nationally, as an article in The Textbook Guru points out:

The ripple effect of this legislation should spread way past California and throughout the whole country. With quality publisher-grade peer-reviewed options becoming newly available in open format and competing against the high-priced publishers' textbooks, faculty will need to pause to review these and see how they can be used in their classroom.

After all, if high-quality textbooks are freely available in digital form -- or hence for low prices as printed copies -- hard-pressed universities elsewhere in the US (and internationally) would be crazy not to consider them. The cc-by license means that the text can be freely modified for local needs as necessary, or translated.

As the above indicates, those 50 titles won't be ready until next year. Meanwhile, in Finland, some teachers decided to produce something a little sooner:

A group of Finnish mathematics researchers, teachers and students write an upper secondary mathematics textbook in a booksprint. The event started on Friday 28th September at 9:00 (GMT+3) and the book will be (hopefully) ready on Sunday evening.

You can find the book's LaTeX source code in a repository on Github: it's under the same cc-by license as the California books, so you can adapt it freely -- if you can read Finnish....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: california, creative commons, education, finland, learning, open textbooks, sharing, textbooks

Common Sense Wins: Finnish Court Says Open WiFi Owner Not Liable For Infringement By User

from the good-to-see dept

For many, many years, we've had a number of debates on the site about whether or not an open WiFi network connection should make the owner liable for what users do on that network. The perfectly common sense response is that, no, they should not be responsible under basic principles of protecting third parties from liability from actions of their users. But, common sense isn't always so common, so we might as well cheer it on a bit when we see it. So, kudos to a Finnish court for ruling that an open WiFi user is not automatically liable for copyright infringement done via her network. As the press release about the case states, the anti-piracy group that brought the lawsuit failed to show any evidence that the owner actually did any infringement. The court also rejected the idea that an injunction be issued against the woman blocking such usage in the future. Thankfully, the court rejected that, recognizing that this would unfairly burden WiFi hotspot operators.

Filed Under: finland, liability, open wifi