Censorship in
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
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 ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
, 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 ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city ...
,
Tornio
Tornio (; sv, Torneå; sme, Duortnus ; smn, Tuárnus) is a city and municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border twin city together with Haparanda on the Swedish side. The municipality covers an area of , of which is ...
,
Kuopio,
Vaasa
Vaasa (; sv, Vasa, , Sweden ), in the years 1855–1917 as Nikolainkaupunki ( sv, Nikolajstad; literally meaning "city of Nicholas), ,
Pori,
Tampere
Tampere ( , , ; sv, Tammerfors, ) is a city in the Pirkanmaa region, located in the western part of Finland. Tampere is the most populous inland city in the Nordic countries. It has a population of 244,029; the urban area has a population o ...
,
Turku
Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...
,
Rauma,
Oulu and
Viipuri.
During the era of
Russification in Finland, several
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
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 from 1941 to 1944, as part of World War II.; sv, fortsättningskriget; german: Fortsetzungskrieg. A ...
, a number of books were withdrawn from public libraries because of
Soviet
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...
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 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 ( fi, suomettuminen; sv, finlandisering; german: Finnlandisierung; et, soomestumine; russian: финляндизация, finlyandizatsiya) is the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrai ...
, major Finnish publishers
tended to avoid books that were thought to risk Soviet displeasure. For example, the first volume of the
Finnish
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
translation of
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn’s ''
The Gulag Archipelago
''The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation'' (russian: Архипелаг ГУЛАГ, ''Arkhipelag GULAG'') is a three-volume non-fiction text written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aleksandr So ...
'' 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 ( fi, Valtion elokuvatarkastamo; sv, Statens filmgranskningsbyrå) was an official institution of the Finnish Ministry of Education. From 1946 until the end of year 2011, the VET/SFB was responsible for ...
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 called CP, child sexual abuse material, CSAM, child porn, or kiddie porn) is pornography that unlawfully exploits children for sexual stimulation. It may be produced with the direct involvement or sexual assault of a ...
, 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 Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, 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 political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
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 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
was briefly blacklisted as childporn by mistake.
In 2008, a government-sponsored report considered establishing similar filtering in order to curb
online gambling
Online gambling 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 the Liechtenstein International Lottery i ...
.
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 ( fi, Eduskunnan oikeusasiamies, sv, Riksdagens ombudsman, is, Umboðsmaður Alþingis, da, Folketingets Ombudsmand, no, Sivilombudet) is the name of the principal ombudsman institutions in Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Nor ...
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 recog ...
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 uses a solid-phase type of enzyme immunoassay (EIA) to detect the presen ...
,
Sonera
Telia Company AB is a Swedish multinational telecommunications company and mobile network operator present in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Telia also owns TV4 Media which includes TV4 in Sweden, MTV Oy in F ...
(now
Telia) and
DNA were ordered by Finnish courts to block traffic to
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ma ...
and put Internet filters on the specific website.
Press
The Finnish press currently enjoys extensive freedom.
Reporters Without Borders' (RWB) annual
Press Freedom Index
The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders since 2002 based upon the organisation's own assessment of the countries' press freedom records in the previous year. It intends to re ...
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, premier 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. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...
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 ( Finnish, literally "General Radio Ltd." or "General Broadcast Ltd."; abbr. Yle ; sv, Rundradion Ab, italics=no), translated to English as the Finnish Broadcasting Company, is Finland's national public broadcasting company, found ...
when it had covered a possible conflict of interests concerning him. RWB Secretary General Christophe Deloire 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
Mass media in Finland includes a variety of online, print, and broadcast formats, such as radio, television, newspapers, and magazines.
Magazines
Newspapers
''Åbo Underrättelser'' newspaper began publication in 1824.
Radio
Yleisradio Oy ...
References
External links
Five years of censorshipat
Lapsiporno.infoRussian Censorship in Finland during WW1
{{DEFAULTSORT:Censorship In Finland