Minister Karpela to clean up filth from Finnish school computers

Content filtering software is being tested at schools; libraries also targeted

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Finnish Minister of Culture Tanja Karpela (Centre Party) reported at her ministry’s annual press briefing on Thursday that special gatekeeper software will be installed into all computers at schools and in public libraries in order to protect children against media violence and to prevent access to websites with harmful content that might threaten their mental health.
      According to Karpela, content filtering software is already in use in 80 municipalities in Finland, preventing access to "filthy pages" through computers at schools and in libraries.
     
New legislation is hardly necessary. "The aim is to establish a sound policy of denying children access to harmful websites", says Karpela. "This kind of gatekeeper or parental control software should become as familiar as virus programmes are today, so that even parents would have them installed in their home computers".
      To minimize the costs, the Ministry of Education intends to examine the prospects for acquiring content filtering programmes for all Finnish schools and libraries simultaneously. So far, each municipality has bought the software separately.
      As an example Karpela mentioned the City of Espoo, where good filtering software is currently being sought. Asko Lippo is in charge of the development of information technology in Espoo’s Finnish-speaking schools, and he notes that they have been testing various filtering programmes since last autumn. The results have been good, but the aim is to find a domestically-manufactured software package that would be easy to maintain and upgrade.
      Karpela believes that healthy competition among software producers will soon result in more attractive prices.
     
At least in Tampere, librarians have played down the problems asociated with children logging on to unsuitable sites on the Net.
      The library staff themselves keep a careful eye on what their customers are doing at open-access terminals, and the impression gained from librarians is that additional censorship would sit uncomfortably with library principles. Home PCs are seen as a much greater problem than those in reading-rooms, where there is greater adult supervision.
     


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nearly 40 Finns caught in Nordic operation against child pornography (26.5.2004)

Links:
  Ministry of Education

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