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In this case, Section 18 of the Freedom of Expression Act (460/2003) was argued to be the basis for access providers to block access to a website allegedly distributing Finnish copyrighted films. The applicant was the police. The district court rejected the request on five different grounds, including that (1) the access provider is not an intermediary referred to in Section 18, (2) the measures are ineffective and (3) the request was not specific enough.

In these four cases, Section 60c of the Copyright Act was applied to disconnect DirectConnect p2p filesharing users. All the issues were settled quickly afterwards and later the request was withdrawn. For a critique of this approach in Finnish, see Pekka Savola, Internet-operaattori ja perusoikeudet in Tapani Lohi (ed), Oikeustiede–Jurisprudentia XLVI:2013 (Suomalainen Lakimiesyhdistys 2013), at 154–156.

The law implements the E-Commerce Directive almost verbatim, Sections 13–15 corresponding to Articles 12–14 of the Directive. (1) A presumption of knowledge is provided by the hosting exemption in Section 15 for certain extreme pornography or incitement to hatred, which are assumed to be known also without a notification. (3) Section 16 allows a court to issue an order to disable access to information, but only applies to hosting providers. The general obligation by the service provider to take action to implement a decision by the authorities is provided in Section 19, which implements Articles 12(3), 13(3) and 14(3) of the Directive. (4) There is no specific provision corresponding to Article 15 of the Directive, regarding the prohibition of monitoring obligations, nor a provision on the obligation to notify the...