The Court held that the provider of an open WLAN network was not shown to infringe and had no duty to protect the WLAN from outsiders. Therefore, the internet subscriber was not liable for infringement by some unknown user using the WLAN network. The fact that, at the same time the infringing activitiy took place, there was a public theater presentation in the internet subscriber's backyard may have been a factor taken into consideration by the court to conclude that someone else may have been the infringer.
In this case, Section 18 of the Freedom of Expression Act (460/2003) was argued to be the basis for access providers to block access to a website allegedly distributing Finnish copyrighted films. The applicant was the police. The district court rejected the request on five different grounds, including that (1) the access provider is not an intermediary referred to in Section 18, (2) the measures are ineffective and (3) the request was not specific enough.
In these four cases, Section 60c of the Copyright Act was applied to disconnect DirectConnect p2p filesharing users. All the issues were settled quickly afterwards and later the request was withdrawn. For a critique of this approach in Finnish, see Pekka Savola, Internet-operaattori ja perusoikeudet in Tapani Lohi (ed), Oikeustiede–Jurisprudentia XLVI:2013 (Suomalainen Lakimiesyhdistys 2013), at 154–156.
The E-Commerce Act, Section 16 was applied to issue against a hosting provider an order to remove access to the website. However, probably due to a technical misunderstanding, the order was issued to a DNS provider. However, it is arguable whether a DNS provider is to be considered a hosting provider and could be ordered to remove infringing content from a domain name.