Censorship In Finland
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Censorship in
Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
refers to government policies in controlling and regulating certain information.


History

In 1686, the office of Censor of Books, which was to monitor literature imported and published in
Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...
, was established. Publishers had to get approval for their books. In the 19th century, the censors attacked the press. Several newspapers were stopped soon after they came out. In 1829, a law was made about censorship, which heavily increased the censorship. The law was in place until 1865. A committee was made to take care of it. Its president was the deputy chancellor of the university.


Locations

During World War I, Russian censorship was carried out in the following cities:
Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...
,
Tornio Tornio (; ; ; ) is a city and municipalities of Finland, municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border Twin cities, twin city together with Haparanda on the Swedish side. The municipality covers an area of , of which is wat ...
,
Kuopio Kuopio ( , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of North Savo. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Kuopio is approximately , while the Kuopio sub-region, sub-region has a population of approximately . It is the mos ...
,
Vaasa Vaasa (; , ), formerly (1855-1917) known as Nikolaistad (; ),Pori Pori (; ; ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Satakunta. It is located on the west coast of the country, on the Gulf of Bothnia. The population of Pori is approximately , while the Pori sub-region, sub-region has a population of a ...
,
Tampere Tampere is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Pirkanmaa. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Tampere is approximately , while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately . It is the most populous mu ...
,
Turku Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Aura River (Finland), River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while t ...
, Rauma,
Oulu Oulu ( , ; ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of North Ostrobothnia. It is located on the northwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Oulujoki, River Oulu. The population of Oulu is approximately , while the Oulu sub-regio ...
and Viipuri. At the end of 19th century during the attempt of Russification in Finland, several Finnish newspapers were taken out of print. During the Second World War, a government agency was founded to administer censorship.


After the Second World War

In the immediate aftermath of the
Continuation War The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet–Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 ...
, a number of books were withdrawn from public libraries because of
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
pressure. This ban concerned mostly pre-war and wartime propaganda works which were considered anti-Soviet, but the books remained in free circulation in the second-hand market. In 1958, the memoirs ''Kommunisti sisäministerinä'' (“Communist as the Minister of Interior”) of former
communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
Minister of Interior Affairs Yrjö Leino were withdrawn from circulation and burned just before publication on Soviet demand. The book was republished in 1991. During the period of
Finlandization Finlandization () is the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrain from opposing the former's foreign policy rules, while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system. The term ...
, major Finnish publishers tended to avoid books that were thought to risk Soviet displeasure. For example, the first volume of the Finnish translation of Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s ''
The Gulag Archipelago ''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' () is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident. It was first published in 1973 by the Parisian ...
'' was published in Sweden, and the remaining two volumes by a minor Finnish publisher.


Modern day


Film

Film censorship carried out by the government agency
Finnish Board of Film Classification The Finnish Board of Film Classification (; ) was an official institution of the Finnish Ministry of Education. From 1946 until the end of year 2011, the VET/SFB was responsible for inspecting and rating the content of movies and video games. I ...
was abolished in 2001. However, the agency still rates all movies sold in Finland.


Internet

In 2006, a new copyright law known as '' Lex Karpela'' set some restrictions on publishing information regarding copy protection schemes. Also in 2006, the government started Internet censorship by delivering Finnish ISPs a secret blocking list maintained by Finnish police. Implementation of the block was voluntary, but some ISPs implemented it. The list was supposed to contain only sites with
child pornography Child pornography (also abbreviated as CP, also called child porn or kiddie porn, and child sexual abuse material, known by the acronym CSAM (underscoring that children can not be deemed willing participants under law)), is Eroticism, erotic ma ...
, but ended up also blocking, among others, the site lapsiporno.info that criticized the move towards censorship and listed sites that were noticed to have been blocked. Following a “voluntary law” enacted by Finnish parliament on 1 January 2007, most of the Finland's major Internet service providers decided on 22 November 2006 to begin filtering child pornography, and ISPs first started filtering in January 2008. The Ministry of Communications has commented that filtering is voluntary for ISPs as long as they do not refuse. The blacklist is provided by Finnish police and should contain only foreign sites. Technically filtering was planned to be URI based, like the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
’s Cleanfeed, but so far implementations have been DNS based. A majority of these censored Internet sites, however, do not actually seem to be censored by the Finnish ISPs due to actual child pornography, but due to “normal” adult pornography instead. Most of the known sites are also located in EU or United States where child pornography is strictly illegal anyway. Two-thirds of the Finnish Internet censorship list of the filtered domains were collected on lapsiporno.info, the homepage of Matti Nikki, a Finnish activist criticizing Internet censorship in the
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
and especially in Finland. On 12 February 2008, Nikki's page was also added to the National Bureau of Investigation’s blacklist ( Wikinews article). As the list was compiled using links from pornography sites, this list does not tell anything about the last third of the blocked sites. At September 2008, problems with accuracy continued, when the website of the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web
W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...
was briefly blacklisted as child pornography by mistake. In 2008, a government-sponsored report considered establishing similar filtering in order to curb
online gambling Online gambling (also known as iGaming or iGambling) is any kind of gambling conducted on the internet. This includes virtual poker, casinos, and sports betting. The first online gambling venue opened to the general public was ticketing for th ...
. After investigation of complaints about how the law on filtering child pornography has been implemented and the actions of the police, the vice
Parliamentary Ombudsman Parliamentary Ombudsman (, , , , ) is the name of the principal ombudsman institutions in Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (where the term ''justice ombudsman'' – or JO – is also used). In each case, the terms refer both to the of ...
concluded on 29 May 2009 that the police had followed the law and that most sites on the list did have material that could be classified as child pornography at the time they were investigated by the police. He also found that the law is somewhat unclear and that its effect on
free speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recognise ...
is problematic and recommends these matters be considered when the law is overseen.


The Pirate Bay

In 2012, internet service providers
Elisa The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) (, ) is a commonly used analytical biochemistry assay, first described by Eva Engvall and Peter Perlmann in 1971. The assay is a solid-phase type of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to detect the presence of ...
,
Sonera Telia Company AB is a Swedish Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in S ...
(now Telia) and
DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...
were ordered by Finnish courts to block traffic to
The Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay, commonly abbreviated as TPB, is a free searchable online index of Film, movies, music, video games, Pornographic film, pornography and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank , The Pirate Bay facilitates the connection ...
and put Internet filters on the specific website.


Press

The Finnish press currently enjoys extensive freedom.
Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...
' (RWB) annual
Press Freedom Index The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) is an annual ranking of Country, countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) since 2002 based upon the non-governmental organization's own assessment of the countries' Freedom of the ...
listed Finland as the country with the freest press for six years in a row between 2010 and 2016. In 2017, Finland fell to third place following an incident dubbed " Sipilägate":
Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...
Juha Sipilä Juha Petri Sipilä (; born 25 April 1961) is a Finnish politician who served as Prime Minister of Finland from 2015 to 2019. A relative newcomer to politics, he has a successful background in business. He was the leader of the Centre Party fr ...
had pressured the national broadcaster
Yle Yleisradio Oy (; ), abbreviated as Yle () (formerly styled in all uppercase until 2012), translated into English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, founded in 1926. It is a joint-stock comp ...
when it had covered a possible conflict of interests concerning him. RWB Secretary General
Christophe Deloire Christophe Deloire (; 22 May 1971 – 8 June 2024) was a French non-governmental organization leader, author, and publisher. Deloire was the director of the Centre de formation des journalistes de Paris from May 2008 to July 2012, and secreta ...
cited Finland losing the first place as the most important development in press freedom surveyed by the Index that year.


See also

* Media of Finland


References


External links


Five years of censorship
at Lapsiporno.info
Russian Postal Censorship in Finland during WW1
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