Court orders private website to be shut down
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The Lohja District Court has ordered an Internet operator to shut down a website maintained by a private individual. In the court's view, it is that the site contains material the public displaying of which is illegal. The 54-year-old man who maintained the website is being accused of a series of libels, some of which are considered grave.
According to State Prosecutor Mika Illman, it is extremely rare that a court should order an Internet site maintained by a private person to be closed down in Finland.
This kind of ruling has only been possible since the beginning of 2004, when the law on freedom of speech came into force.
The shutting down of an Internet site can be claimed by the prosecutor, a plaintiff, or the police. The information technology crime unit of the Helsinki Police Department, for one, has never submitted such a request, recalls police sergeant Pertti Koivisto from the unit.
"Certainly we have looked into cases involving libellous action on the Internet", Koivisto explains. "But the police won't easily call for legal measures to close down a website."
Information officer Tarja Österberg from the Internet operator Saunalahti, the service provider of the accused man, is not aware of previous cases where a court order would have been issued to shut down web pages.
The Lohja incident was first reported by the Länsi-Uusimaa daily on Monday.
The shutting down of the website was called for by the plaintiffs, who - according to the indictment - had been subjected to libel. On his website, the accused man had written about the three plaintiffs using their names.
The webpages in question remain temporarily closed, until a court decision has been reached in the matter. The court has also decided to handle the case behind closed doors to protect the privacy of the plaintiffs. If the court rules in favour of the plaintiffs, the Internet site may be ordered to be removed permanently.
According to senior inspector Sari Kajantie of the National Bureau of Investigation (Finland's central criminal police) the shutting down of Internet sites is likely to become more common in the future. After all, the law that makes this possible is still fairly new.
Kajantie notes that so far the cases looked into by the bureau, where shutting down a web site might have come into question, have primarily concerned suspicions of racist hate crimes directed against ethnic minorities. Child pornography is another possible cause. The logic of demanding the removal of such sites in the case of libel suits is that unless the text is physically removed from the Net, it will remain there to perpetuate the offence. In the case of radio and television, meanwhile, the offensive information is seen or heard by the public only once. In principle, the current law would also allow for the destroying of illegal books.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 28.3.2006 - TODAY |
 Court orders private website to be shut down
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