The best footballer Finland has ever produced reflects on the highs and lows of his career and his anonymous life today in Estonia

There are not many people who can get away with a leather jacket. Especially a fur-lined, double-breasted leather jacket. But Jari Litmanen, now 53, is definitely one of those people, as he strolls through the Old Town in his adopted home city of Tallinn. It would be impossible in Finland or Amsterdam but here he walks freely, seemingly just another middle-aged man trying to stay out of the cold. But between 1994 and 1996 he was the best footballer at Ajax, then the best male team in the world. Of course, he was loved for his talent. But he was also loved for the way he kicked the ball, the way he looked. Nineties Litmanen was a vibe, and it turns out the 2024 version isn’t far off.

The Finn doesn’t grant many interviews, certainly not in person. His aloofness has fed the image that he is shy, reserved, mercurial, perhaps even a little arrogant. This is the opposite picture of the person who comes bouncing into the room, who beams comfortably at the camera. Litmanen is generous with his time, polite to all those around him, meticulous with his details. He is also surprisingly funny. Not laugh-a-minute funny, but there is a mischief in his face, a sparkle in those dark eyes. We talk about his recent appearance on the Finnish version of Top Gun, his new Instagram account (in which he shares positive news of Edwin van der Sar’s recovery from serious illness ), his acting as an Amsterdam diamond jeweller and comedic timing in Finnish children’s films as a Dutch art dealer and an Italian pizza delivery man .

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Nordic Response aims to strengthen cooperation between countries and bolster alliance’s ability to defend region

A first-of-its-kind training exercise involving more than 20,000 soldiers from 13 countries has launched across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland as the region prepares to become a fully Nato territory within days.

The joint defence exercise, which runs until 14 March, was previously known as Cold Response and held in northern Norway, a founding Nato member, every other year. In recognition of Finland’s recent membership of the western military alliance, and with Sweden expected to join imminently, this year it is being designated Nordic Response for the first time.

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It is now often known as the ‘world’s happiest country’, but Finland used to have one of the highest suicide rates in the world. From alcohol to antidepressants, here are the changes that made the difference

“Now he’s died,” said his mother’s voice down the phone. Instantly, Jaakko Teittinen knew that what he had feared for years had happened: his older brother, Tuomas, had taken his own life. He was 33.

In a state of shock, Jaakko left work to join his mother at Linnanmäki, a theme park in Helsinki, where she was spending the day with Tuomas’s two children, who lived in foster care and had no idea what had just happened. While his mother started to make arrangements, he went on the rides with his brother’s children, trying not to give away what was on his mind.

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Given the ongoing shift in the TV market away from terrestrial and satellite delivery in favor of IP-based services, cloud recording services are no longer the big deal they once were.

When TVkaista launched in Finland way back in 2007, storing video in the cloud certainly wasn’t taken for granted as it is now. The service came with a program guide and allowed users to record and store TV shows from 15 local channels. TVkaista said video would be retained for a month, allowing users to watch their recordings at a time of their choosing.

At the time, similar services were also being offered by several of Finland’s internet service providers but for the members of the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center (CIAPC, also known as TTVK), this was a serious breach of copyright law. In letters sent to around 20 companies, TTVK warned that without proper licensing, these services were illegal and must be shut down.

TVkaista Faces Legal Action

In advance of TTVK’s letters being sent out, TVkaista’s CEO, technical director, and legal advisor, faced legal action for criminal copyright infringement and aggravated fraud. Claims that recording amounted to fair use were brushed aside, not least since the service actually recorded everything behind the scenes, contrary to customers’ belief that any recordings played back via the service were unique to them.

TVkaista said that since its service was similar to a VCR or a DVR, that would be legal under Finnish law since private copying is permitted for personal use. The TV companies whose content was being recorded and fed back to subscribers of TVkaista disagreed, arguing that no permission was granted for this type of use.

The broadcasters claimed that the TVkaista service effectively rebroadcast their content without a license. Copyright holders weren’t being paid for the use of their content and TVkaista wasn’t offering to share any revenue.

Service Deemed Illegal

The TV companies took TVkaista to court in 2012 and, in 2015, the Helsinki District Court deemed the service illegal, a decision confirmed by the Court of Appeal in 2017.

The CEO of TVkaista was convicted of criminal copyright infringement and embezzlement, and together with the service’s technical director and the company itself, was found jointly and severally liable for damages suffered by rightsholders. Financial issues would soon complicate the case, however.

In a statement issued by TTVK this week, the anti-piracy group says that after TVkaista was declared bankrupt in February 2014, the service actually continued, first through its Finnish .fi domain and later through a .com variant. The platform eventually shut down in 2015, but the bankruptcy estate had no funds available to pay the compensation owed.

“The trustee made a request to the police for an investigation into the ambiguities related to the bankruptcy estate. The suspect was the CEO of TVkaista Oy, who, however, could not be reached for prosecution before November 2023,” TTVK reveals.

Finally Held to Account

After the matter returned to court, it was determined that since 2011, customer payments to TVkaista totaling 1.8 million euros, including 380,000 euros after bankruptcy proceedings began, had been “diverted past” TVkaista’s accounting.

“The money had been transferred to the account of a company called Charm Noble Ltd in Hong Kong. However, since the contact person for all payment arrangements was the accused CEO, the court did not find credible his claim that the company’s business had actually been sold to a foreign person already in 2011,” TTVK reports.

“In support of its argument, the defense presented a deed of sale dated 2011, which had not been presented in previous TVkaista trials; however, they claimed that the business was sold already in 2009.”

On February 12, the district court of Länsi-Uusimaa found the former CEO guilty of all charges and sentenced him to serve three years in prison for gross accounting crime, gross dishonesty, and gross fraud as a debtor. He was also ordered to pay 409,600 euros (plus interest) to rights holders, plus 59,554 euros (plus interest) to other parties.

“The verdict confirms that copyright piracy is a planned and ruthless economic crime, the sole purpose of which is to collect as much money as possible for its creators,” says Jaana Pihkala, executive director of TTVK.

“Ever since the copyright infringement process started, the users of the TVkaista service paid large sums of money for the maintenance of content, while the authors, producers or legal intermediaries of which, have not been paid a single cent. This kind of activity weakens the opportunities to develop legal services and invest in new content, which is harmful not only to the rights holders but also to society as a whole.”

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Country choosing between former PM Alexander Stubb and ex-foreign minister Pekka Haavisto

Finland headed back to the polls on Sunday for a runoff vote in the country’s most high-stakes presidential election in a generation.

The former prime minister Alexander Stubb, of the centre-right National Coalition party, led in the polls but his rival Pekka Haavisto, a former foreign minister and a member of the Green party who is running as an independent, had narrowed the gap in the last few days of campaigning.

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As Finns elect a new president in the shadow of Putin’s hostility and a possible Trump return, all eyes are on national security

In 1905, in the Finnish city of Tampere, Vladimir Lenin met Joseph Stalin for the first time. They and two dozen or so revolutionaries began to map out plans to overthrow the tsar and bring down the Russian empire. The story is vividly chronicled in Tampere’s Lenin Museum , a venue that thousands of Soviet citizens used to descend on each year, in official groups; in these different times, it is seen as something of an embarrassment by the city authorities.

Since the collapse of Soviet communism in 1991, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Finland’s accession to Nato in 2023 , the museum has successively changed its exhibits. It still tells the remarkable story of that secret meeting a century ago, when Finland was part of the tsarist Russian empire, but enjoyed a certain autonomy until it gained independence immediately after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

John Kampfner is a commentator and broadcaster. He is the author of In Search of Berlin and Why the Germans Do It Better

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Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. is one of the most interesting cases in history to rely on a fair use defense, arguing that the alleged infringement qualifies as a parody.

Acuff-Rose sued members of hip hop group 2 Live Crew, claiming that their track “Pretty Woman” infringed the label’s copyright in the Roy Orbison song, “Oh, Pretty Woman.” 2 Live Crew had previously sought to license the track from Acuff-Rose to be used as a parody; Acuff-Rose refused and 2 Live Crew used it anyway.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court where 2 Live Crew prevailed; their parody was ruled fair use, despite being a commercial product. Still, some believed 2 Live Crew’s music shouldn’t have been on sale at all. Three members were previously arrested for alleged obscenity violations but were eventually acquitted after the men received support from freedom of speech activists.

Free Speech Has Limits

A criminal copyright infringement trial that concluded in Finland this week also saw the defendant rely on a fair use-style parody defense. It involved the use of copyrighted content to create an alleged ‘parody’ (one that many people would find offensive), the distribution of that content to the public via Twitter, and a defendant claiming immunity under copyright law. Not that other routes hadn’t already been tested, however.

Former Oulu city councilor Junes Lokka and controversy are rarely far apart. He regularly voices his opinions on ethnic minorities, including what they represent, and what should be done with them. In 2022, Lokka faced Finland’s Supreme Court over videos of a 2016 protest published to his YouTube channel, to which Lokka added subtitles in various languages.

While the words in those videos were not Lokka’s, his claim to be acting as a journalist when he added subtitles was rejected by the court. Upholding the decision of a lower court the Supreme Court concluded that, since the videos contained hate speech and Lokka was responsible for them appearing on his YouTube channel, his conviction for incitement to ethnic hatred must stand.

Subtitle Defense 2.0: The Parody

In the spring of 2020, as the enormity of the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to take hold, Finland’s national public broadcaster Yleisradio Oy (Finnish Broadcasting Company) aired a news broadcast in Somali. Without obtaining permission, Lokka made a copy of the report, added his own subtitles, and then retransmitted the new version to the public via Twitter.

In the opinion of Yleisradio, the subtitles added by Lokka were both racist and degrading. When he copied and then rebroadcast the news report, that was copyright infringement.

Lokka claimed there was no requirement to obtain permission from Yleisradio. New law that came into force in April 2023 allows the free use of copyright works for parody, pastiche, and caricature.

Lokka chose parody but under the circumstances, that underperformed.

Parody Under Copyright Law

Yleisradio was represented by the Copyright Information and Control Center (TTVK) and as the Finnish anti-piracy group revealed this week, the nature of the subtitles added to the news report proved fatal to Lokka’s defense.

“[Th]e court determined that this could not be considered a parody as referenced in Section 23a of the Copyright Act, but a prohibited modification of the work,” TTVK explains.

“The use of the recording in the manner outlined in the case was not justified under copyright exceptions. The court considered that the edited video contained a discriminatory message, and in its reasoning referred to the interpretation guidelines provided by the Court of Justice of the European Union.”

Freedom of Speech vs. Prohibiting Discrimination

Those guidelines reference a legal opinion in C-201/13 – Deckmyn and Vrijheidsfonds VZW v Vandersteen and Others which found that in order for a derivative work to be considered a parody, certain conditions must be met ( pdf ) .

In the Finnish matter, compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights, which upholds freedom of expression but prohibits discrimination on grounds of race or religion, proved crucial.

“Accordingly, an act containing a discriminatory message cannot be considered a permitted parody,” TTVK reports.

With parody status unavailable, the content posted to Twitter was confirmed as an unauthorized derivative work, distributed by Lokka, in breach of copyright.

“The court found the defendant guilty of a copyright crime and sentenced him to a fine,” TTVK reports .

“The court sentenced him to pay EUR 640 in compensation for the use of the work in accordance with the Copyright Act, and EUR 2,260 in compensation. In addition, the court prohibited the person from continuing or repeating the act.”

Comments posted to Lokka’s X/Twitter account suggest that to the extent any deterrent effect was intended, it may be quite limited.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Steamy, spiritual and stress-busting, there are more than 3m saunas in Finland. Not only are they skin tingling, they help people explore what it is to be human

I should not be surprised if an older sauna-goer asks me to scrub their back, says Alexander Lembke, as he talks me through the workings of Finland’s oldest working public sauna. “You just do it, help them. There you can see how deeply rooted the sauna is here in the community.” Usually Lembke, who describes himself as a “sauna classicist”, undertakes heating responsibilities (a seven-hour process that begins at 7am) at Rajaportti sauna in Tampere naked. But seeing as he has visitors, today he is dressed in swimming trunks and sliders, accessorised with a multitude of maritime-themed tattoos.

I have come to Finland to learn about its sauna culture, a tradition so valued that in 2020 it was inscribed on the Unesco list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. My starting place, Tampere, one-and-a-half hours by train north of Helsinki, has about 60 public saunas in a city of around 250,000 inhabitants, earning it the title of “ sauna capital of the world ”.

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Discovery of intact bottles on 1852 shipwreck sparks development of underwater ageing process

You might think that 1,500 years after the first bottle was drunk there wasn’t much more innovation left to be had in the rarefied world of champagne. You would be wrong. The next big thing in the £6bn-a-year industry is: undersea ageing.

Like so many of the world’s best innovations, it began by accident. In 2010, a group of divers in Finland’s Åland archipelago came across the wreck of a ship that sank in 1852 and were surprised to find 145 bottles of champagne 160ft below the surface . Even more surprisingly, the bottles were still full and tasted – in the words of a professor of food biochemistry – “incredible – I have never tasted such a wine in my life”.

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