Interview in Todays Politiken

by Tykling @ October 01, 2011 23:32

This Thursday Jakob Sorgenfri Kjær from the Danish newspaper Politiken called me and asked if he could ask a few questions about censurfridns.dk in connection with the EU approval of the new Danish gaming law. I agreed, and the interview resulted in a story in today's print edition of Politiken. The frontpage of the printed newspaper has this teaser which is also available online, but which does not mention censurfridns.dk. The real story is on page 10 of section 1 of the printed newspaper.

The story's first part is about censurfridns.dk and it contains a couple of nice quotes from my conversation with the journalist. The actual arguments reproduced in the article are: the "early warning system" problem in relation to blocking sites that depict child abuse, and the double standard in criticizing Iran and China for censoring the Internet when we do it ourselves.

The story's second part is about all the different types of censorship we have in Denmark today, with a review of the dates when the most recent laws came into effect (pharmaceutical blocking July 1st, 2011, gambling blocking Jan. 1st 2012). This part of the story also quotes Jakob Willer from the Telecommunications Industry (TI), who explains why ISPs insist on a court order before blocking domains within the pharmaceutical and Gambling Act. Birgitte Sand from the gambling authority wonders, and says The Gambling law aims to protect young people and vulnerable people from developing gambling addiction. Personally I find it difficult to see how blocking a few gambling sites on the Internet can help, when Danske Spil are running very extensive ad campaigns continually. See also also my post about the gambling law.

The story's third and final part explains how TI, DI, the Danish Consumer Council and a host of others have complained about Internet censorship to the science minister from the outgoing government, without significant results. It seems that the new government may handle it differently. Benny Engelbrecht from Socialdemokraterne is quoted as saying All four parties have expressed skepticism about the method. What that will mean is difficult to say at this time, but we want to take a principled discussion when the new government is in place - nice.

All in all I am satisfied with the interview and article, it is always interesting to see how your words has been interpreted by the media, but I am satisfied with the outcome in this case. We spoke for a long time and the reporter made an actual effort to understand the problem properly, thankfully there are still people in the industry who knows how to do their job.

Tags: censorship interview