Censorship inDenmark has been prohibited since 1849 by theConstitution:
§ 77: Any person shall be at liberty to publish his ideas in print, in writing, and in speech, subject to his being held responsible in a court of law. Censorship and other preventive measures shall never again be introduced.[1]
This effectively means that published material does not need prior acceptance from a censor before being released, also known asprior restraint. However,child pornography,hate speech,copyright,libel, andstate security laws do exist, which means that authors, publishers, and others can be held responsible for statements in publicly disseminated material that violates these laws. Until June 2017, §140 of theDanish penal code (colloquially,blasfemiparagraffen) outlawedblasphemy.
Internet censorship became a growing issue in Denmark from 2005 withchild pornography sites,[2]file-sharing sites such asAllOfMP3 and, more recently,The Pirate Bay, being blocked on theDNS level by ISPs.[3] On 23 December 2008,WikiLeaks released a list of 3,863 sites being filtered in Denmark. However, no evidence of Internet filtering was found by theOpenNet Initiative in 2009.[4] Due to legal issues ONI does not test for filtering of child pornography. In November 2011, the DNS blocking was expanded to include websites selling drugs[5] and unlicensedonline gambling sites.[6] The DNS filters can easily becircumvented by simply changing to a differentDNS server, such asGoogle Public DNS,OpenDNS, censurfridns.dk and other similar services.[7]
This situation has been criticised by several organisations and in June 2011 in an open letter a confederation of the Danish IT-business organisations appealed to the Danish government for a revision of this practice and for the institution of clear legislation on the subject.[8]
In 2012Internet service providers (ISPs) and copyright holders in Denmark agreed on a framework where all ISPs will block access to copyright-infringing content if one of the providers is ordered to do so by a court. TheDanish Ministry of Culture plans to work with ISPs and rights holder groups to "formalise" the agreement in a "written Code of Conduct".[9]
In February and March 2004 threeBerlingske Tidende journalists, Michael Bjerre, Jesper Larsen, and Niels Lunde, were prosecuted for "harming state security" after publishing the details of classified intelligence reports about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In December 2006 the three were acquitted by a Copenhagen court.[10]
On 18 October 2005 Denmark's biggest Internet service providerTDC A/S launched aDNS-basedchild pornography filter in cooperation with thestate police department andSave the Children, a charity organisation. Since then, all major providers have joined and as of May 2006, 98% of the Danish Internet users were restricted by the filter.[11]
Also, as of 18 October 2005, TDC A/S had blocked Internet access toAllOfMP3.com, a popularMP3 download site, through DNS filtering.[12]
In March 2006, Internet filtering caused some controversy when a legal sex site namedBizar.dk was blocked, sparking discussion about the reliability, accuracy and credibility of the filter.[13]
On 4 February 2008 a Danish court ordered the Danish ISPTele2 to shut down access to thefile-sharing sitethepiratebay.org for its Danish users.[14]
Right-wing commentatorLars Hedegaard was prosecuted under thehate speech statute (§ 266b) for remarks made to a blogger in December 2009criticizing Islam. He was first acquitted in the District Court in January 2011, then convicted upon appeal to High Court in May 2011, and finally acquitted in April 2012 by the Danish Supreme Court, which ruled that it could not be proved that he intended for the statements to be published.[15] Danish politicianJesper Langballe pleaded guilty and was convicted of hate speech for comments he made about rape andhonour killings in Muslim families in a newspaper article in connection with Hedegaard's case.[16]
In November 2011 a website selling diet pills,24hdiet.com, was blocked by Danish ISPs, the first use of a new law on the blocking of foreign websites that sell drugs.[5]
