Professor warns against rushing to criminalise degrading livestreams

Excesses in degrading livestreams could already be addressed under Finnish criminal law, a University of Turku law professor told Yle, warning that creating a new offence would require careful consideration.

The issue drew renewed attention this week after a Finnish woman who posted self-harm material during a livestream died from her injuries on Tuesday. Earlier in October, another Finnish livestreamer was seriously injured after falling from a balcony during a broadcast.

National Coalition Party MP Marko Kilpi said on Friday that he had submitted a parliamentary initiative to examine whether degrading livestreaming could be criminalised, as it has been in Poland.

The content format, which has gradually grown in popularity in Finland and especially in Eastern Europe, typically features people doing everyday activities while intoxicated. Streamers often talk to the camera and drink, sometimes in public. Some stream in the hope of earning money: the platform Kick pays popular creators, and sponsorship deals, including with online casinos, can provide additional income.

In some cases, viewers use donations to encourage streamers to act recklessly, including by committing violence against another person, the article reports.

Poland introduced a law this summer under which people who share specified content online for financial or personal gain can face up to three years in prison, or up to five years if the content involves minors. The law covers offences against personal rights or interests, animal abuse, and degrading or humiliating treatment of another person, even if that person has consented. Sharing such material for journalistic or artistic purposes is permitted.

Tatu Hyttinen, an associate professor of criminal law at the University of Turku, said many of the acts covered by the Polish law could already be addressed under Finnish criminal law. Assaulting someone during a livestream, for example, would be an assault. In some circumstances, donations that encourage a streamer to commit a crime could also be punishable as indirect perpetration.

Before creating a new offence, lawmakers would need to identify what the law is intended to protect and weigh its potential benefits against its harms, Hyttinen said. Benefits might include improving children’s mental health, while a possible cost could be restricting freedom of speech. He questioned what a new law would achieve if it mainly criminalised conduct that is already an offence.

Hyttinen said legislation may not be the best way to address every problem, and cautioned against rushing into criminal-law changes in response to individual incidents. Much of the content may be considered immoral, but a pluralistic society also requires tolerance of behaviour people dislike, he said.