Whiskygate

This has been discussed online at length, so I won’t go into details. In short, Finland’s State Regional Administration Agency (Avi) told the organizers of the “Beer and Whisky Expo” that if Google searches for “whisky” return links to their event, they’d lose their liquor licence and the event would have to be cancelled.

According to the organisers, Avi had then said that the event’s license might be revoked if google searches for whisky turned up links to the event.

Consider the implications of that. Either:
A) Anyone can cancel someone else’s event just by blogging about it, or:
B) There’s no way to limit or control the advertising of hard liquors online, since you can always do it “as a private blogger”.

I’m leaning towards B), since the above article also says that:

Helsingin Sanomat reported on Sunday that the head of Avi unit for southern Finland, Anneli Taina, would be seeking an explanation if they had indeed threatened organisers with license cancellation.

If Avi determines that their bureaucrat was in the wrong when they threatened with the cancellation of the licence, we can expect to start seeing a lot of “private bloggers” writing about events and products that can’t be advertised.

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