scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> And then of course in the process, some sites are going to get blocked which 
> shouldn't have been, but that's life.  Especially if you name your site 
> "childporn.com" I would expect it to get blocked - no matter what the actual 
> content.

  But the law only allows blocking because of illegal content. Having a
provocative host name is not illegal. Censoring such a site is illegal.

> Anyway, why is it illegal for ISPs to only allow traffic from certain sites 
> that they choose (or are told by some other organisation)?

  If I'm not mistaken, it's ultimately because of the Finnish constitution,
which says:

"Everyone has the freedom of expression. Freedom of expression entails the
right to express, disseminate and receive information, opinions and other
communications without prior prevention by anyone. More detailed provisions
on the exercise of the freedom of expression are laid down by an Act."

  What this means is that nobody has the right to stop anyone from getting
some information unless that information has been specifically stated
illegal by law.

  The law about purposeful disturbance of telecommunications is probably
based on this.

  Teleoperators have no right to censor legal information from the internet
because it would constitute a breach of both of these laws. If they censor
some legal material, they are willingly and on purpose stopping their
users from getting that material, which is against the constitution.

>  AIUI there is no 
> law that says all ISPs must allow access to the whole internet uncensored.

  I suppose it has never been tested in court, but censoring individual
websites which only contain legal material would seem to quite clearly
be against the law.

  If some small ISP only provided access to a small intranet (because of
monetary reasons or whatever), that would be quite understandable and
probably completely legal. If a big ISP blocked access to all webpages
containing information eg. about communism, while providing access to
everything else in the internet, that would probably be very illegal.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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