scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> IANAL, but the laws I know seem very precise and specific, and no way can 
> they be applied to things like criticising the government in general.  Do 
> you know any different?

  For example in Finland there's a law about incitement against certain
groups of people (such as ethnic groups).

  What the letter of the law means is that it's illegal to incite people
to commit crimes against people based, for example, on their ethnicity
or nationality.

  In practice, however, this is an "umbrella law" which can and *is* used
to sue anyone who offends, and sometimes even criticizes certain religious
or ethnic groups, even when there's no incitement. The law is stretched to
conventiently cover these cases too.

  This is applied rather hypocritically here too. For example extremely
and outrageously offensive public displays of Jesus go completely
unpunished, but even mild parodies of Mohammed can cause and have caused
police investigations.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message