This week I had the opportunity to listen to a panel debate on the EU proposal about censorship of child pornography on the Internet. Rikard has written extensively on the debate already (in Swedish), and I can definitely recommend reading it. My own reflections can perhaps be summarised in that the question is indeed a complex one. The panel consisted of nine people, some with rather different opinions, and despite the amount of people in the panel, I believe that Hannes Råstam (SVT) did a really good job at moderating the discussion. In the end, we heard most of the arguments from the people in the panel, even if I would have liked to hear more from Hanna Harnesk and some others who did not get very many minutes in the debate.

After the debate, I had the opportunity to talk more with Anders Persson from Interpol, and I believe that the primary concern for both Anders and Björn Sellström from RKP is that they are part of the executive branch. They are not legislative, and their task is to, to the best of their ability, follow the existing legislation. One can argue that filtering is not the most effective way they have to work with, and indeed, they do many more things than just filtering, but I could also see their position: not filtering, regardless of its effectiveness, could easily be seen as negligent.

I am however deeply troubled that there is no way to appeal a filter. At the very least, a decision to filter a site should be a government decision which can be appealed in the usual way.

We should ask our legislators to codify in law under which conditions a site may be blocked, who can take such a decision, and how the site owner or a third party may appeal such a decision.

Of course, we can not ask our legislators to do this if they don't show up for the debate. This is perhaps the most troubling of the entire issue. From having contacted all political parties, as well as youth groups of those parties, only two showed up: the left party (socialist and feminist, formerly communist party), and the Pirate Party. That the Pirate Party participated was not at all surprising: net neutrality is after all one of their core concerns. But that none of the parties of the government coalition appeared is indeed bad.

We need to raise awareness of these issues, and to bring this up on the political agenda so that it can be discussed and eventually rectified. The ISPs need not wait for this though. The agreement they have signed is voluntary, and they can decide to leave that agreement. The burden now lies on both political parties and the ISPs. The political parties need to make this issue their own, to bring the issue to the political agenda, and the ISPs need to do what's in their power to ensure that their customers, the constituents of previously mentioned political parties, have a democratic way to appeal filtering. If they can not, then perhaps the right thing to do would be to not filter.