Censorship in Denmark has been prohibited since 1849 as per the Constitution, § 77.[1]
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.
This effectively means that published material does not need prior acceptance from a censor before being released. However, hate speech and libel laws do exist, which means that authors, publishers and other can be held responsible for statements in publicly disseminated material that infringes upon these laws.
Internet censorship became a growing issue in Denmark from 2006 with sites like AllOfMP3 and, most recently, The Pirate Bay, being blocked on the DNS level by ISPs.[2] This is not an official censorship initiative by the government or legislative branch, but a "voluntary" implementation of a DNS filter, with sites to be blocked proposed by the police and court rulings such as The Pirate Bay cases. As this functions through voluntary acts of self censorship by the ISPs, it has not been tested in the courts. 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 the of institution of clear legislation on the subject.[3]
The DNS filters are not enforced and can be circumvented by simply changing to a different DNS server, such as Google Public DNS or OpenDNS and similar.
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