No charges against Matti Nikki

Tietokone.fi: Nikin sensuroidut sivut vapautettiin syytteistä

Matti Nikki, a Finnish Internet activist, had access to his website blocked last year by the Finnish police. (my original post on the topic is here) On the site, he criticized the Finnish police for their inefficient and unconstitutional anti-child pornography measures. In retaliation, the police added Nikki's site to their anti-child porn block list, and when he complained, they filed charges against him for distributing child pornography.

In my opinion, the charges were purely malicious, based on a technicality in Finnish law that leaves the "distribution of child pornography" so loosely defined that technically any ISP, or Google, could be found guilty.

Before you think this is a victory for free speech, the charges were also overturned on a technicality. In the decision, the Finnish state prosecutor decided to overturn the charges because it can't be conclusively proved that any of the sites Nikki linked to contained child pornography at the precise time he linked to them. Also, according to the Finnish police, the decision to not charge him will have no bearing on Nikki's site being censored.

The last part is self-evident, because the censorship is based on an extrajudicial, illegal decision by the Finnish police; it predates the criminal charges. Nikki's legal team is now trying to challenge the decision to censor his website.

In their decision, the state prosecutors upheld the interpretation that "constructing a link" (bizarrely "linkin rakentaminen" in the original Finnish) can constitute distributing child pornography, but simply posting a URL as text is not a crime.

Think about that for a moment. If you can click it, it's a crime. If you have to select it, copy it and paste it onto the address bar of your browser, then it isn't.

It should be noted that the legal basis for this interpretation is absolutely nothing. The law doesn't specify what constitutes distributing child pornography. The way I see it, if you get a Google result that gives you a link to a child porn website, they're guilty of distributing child pornography, if you can prove there was child porn on the website at the time it was linked to.

Also, the prosecutors' decision confirms my previous belief in the official definition of child pornography in Finland: anything an investigating officer looks at and believes to depict a minor. Apparently it doesn't matter if the website provides contact details and a custodian of records as required by US law; if a Finnish policeman thinks that girl looks under 18, it's child pornography, and possessing it is a crime under Finnish law.

Again, think about that for a minute. If the police think an explicit picture or video on your computer depicts a minor, you're guilty. They're not required to prove it, for instance. A majority of the censored porn sites on the Finnish block list are gay or "teen" porn, based in Western countries. Most of the US sites seem to be legal, and provide the address of their custodian of records, which would make it possible to find out if a given model on the site was a minor or not.

The Finnish police don't need to do that. They can just decide. And then you're guilty; no proof necessary.

Now, I seriously doubt they're going to start prosecuting people for having "teen" porn on their computers, but I'm just saying they could if they wanted to. And as for the status of Nikki's site and the block list, the first thing his legal team is trying to accomplish is to get the Finnish police to make an official decision to censor the site, so they can file a complaint. The censorship is totally extrajudicial so there isn't even any way to file a complaint.

This is interesting, though. I tried to find some clause in the Finnish constitution that would say that Finnish citizens are innocent until proven guilty, or that the police isn't allowed to take extrajudicial action to restrict the liberties of Finnish citizens. I couldn't find it.

Just as well, since nothing is stopping them now.