The law today punishes stalking, threats and spreading lies, but stalking requires that the same person is harassed repeatedly. What slips through is harassment where each victim gets their share only once. Picture a video maker who goes out to embarrass, startle or provoke strangers on camera, hundreds or thousands of times, and earns ad money from the videos. None of the victims has been stalked, yet harassment is the whole business model. I propose a new, general offence of spiteful harassment: it would be a crime to act in a way whose clear main purpose is to torment someone else and which has no other sensible purpose, even if it targets each person only once. Making money from the harassment would not be a defence; if anything, it would make the act worse. At the same time, ordinary criticism, journalism and satire must be clearly excluded so the law does not become a muzzle on free speech.
This is an unfinished working draft: the statutory text is a sketch, not a polished proposal.
Punishability must not depend on the platform or the money
If the goal is specifically a general harassment offence that also covers harassment done for profit, for example on YouTube, the provision should be worded so that punishability does not depend on the platform or on whether the perpetrator earns money from it. Commercial gain would instead be an explicit aggravating factor.
The principle of legality demands precision
In Finland such a provision has to be quite precise because of the principle of legality in criminal law: punishable behaviour must be foreseeable from the law. That is why the current Criminal Code defines, for example, stalking and defamation through concrete acts and effects. Stalking covers someone who repeatedly threatens, follows, monitors, contacts or in some comparable way unlawfully stalks another so that it is likely to cause fear or distress (Criminal Code 25:7 a, Minilex). Harassment that does not frighten but annoys, humiliates and obstructs does not always fit.
The Supreme Court has also held that not all feedback, however forceful, for example to public officials, is punishable, and that stalking requires repeated acts aimed at the same person (KKO 2022:9, commentary). A one-off act is therefore not stalking, even if the perpetrator repeats the same stunt on hundreds of different people. This is exactly the gap the draft is meant to fill.
Draft: Spiteful harassment
Spiteful harassment
A person who intentionally acts towards another person in a manner
- whose main purpose, clearly apparent from the circumstances, is to cause that person harm, trouble, disturbance, humiliation, distress or another comparable negative consequence,
- which, assessed as a whole, has no other significant, acceptable and independent purpose, and
- which, considering its triviality or other circumstances, cannot be regarded as ordinary or tolerable conduct belonging to human interaction,
shall be sentenced for spiteful harassment to a fine.
Spiteful harassment may include, in particular, embarrassing, startling or provoking another person, repeated contact, following, disturbing, making pointless reports or demands, systematically obstructing the other person’s activities, or producing, publishing or distributing material concerning them, if the conduct meets the conditions in subsection 1. A single act may suffice.
The commercial nature of the conduct, the financial gain derived from it or the gaining of an audience through it does not constitute an acceptable purpose if the main content or purpose of the activity is harassing another person as referred to in subsection 1.
When assessing the purpose of the conduct, particular account shall be taken of the content of the acts, whether the perpetrator has acted in the same way towards several different people, the recording of the acts for publication, the repetition of the acts, the perpetrator’s previous conduct, the perpetrator’s statements about their purpose, and whether the conduct had a genuine purpose independent of the harassment.
Spiteful harassment does not, however, include justified criticism, expressing opinions, satire, journalism, scientific or artistic activity, consumer feedback, use of legal remedies, a justified report to an authority, or other exercise of a fundamental right or legal right, unless the form of activity is evidently used merely as a pretext for harassment.
If a more severe penalty for the act is provided elsewhere in law, that provision shall apply primarily.
Ad revenue does not make harassment acceptable
The subsection on commercial activity would matter precisely in YouTube, TikTok, podcast and streaming cases. It would not be enough as a defence to say: “I make these videos to get views and ad revenue.” If the actual concept of the videos is deliberately harassing strangers on camera, the commercial motive would not turn it into an acceptable purpose.
A critical video is not a crime because it makes money
At the same time, an ordinary critical YouTube video would not be a crime merely because its maker earns money from it. If the video has a genuine journalistic, societal, entertainment, critical or other independent purpose, the offence would in principle not be made out. This exception matters for free speech. The current defamation provision also explicitly protects criticism of another person’s conduct in, for example, politics, business, public office, science or art that does not clearly exceed what is acceptable (Criminal Code 24:9, subsection 2, Minilex).
Next step: a basic and an aggravated form
A more workable legal model would split the offence into basic spiteful harassment and aggravated spiteful harassment. In the aggravated form, for example, systematic commercial harassment, a large number of victims, a large audience or substantial financial gain could raise the maximum penalty from a fine to imprisonment.
Open questions: can the target avoid it, and is online different?
Two more angles could be added to the draft:
- Can the target avoid the situation? The factors to be assessed could include whether the person harassed had a reasonable chance to avoid the conduct. You can block messages, but you cannot make videos about yourself disappear, and you cannot move out of your own home because of a neighbour’s spite.
- Online versus in-person harassment. The law could address separately how harassment online differs from harassment elsewhere, for example in audience size, permanence of the material and how it spreads.
Novelty
I searched for counterparts in the laws of Finland, the other Nordic countries, France and Germany and in Finnish legislative drafting, using terms such as kiusanteko rikos, maalittaminen rikoslaki, hensynsløs atferd, harcèlement moral en ligne and Schikaneverbot.
Norway already has a very similar general provision
The closest counterpart is section 266 of the Norwegian Penal Code (hensynsløs atferd, reckless conduct): anyone who by frightening or annoying behaviour or other reckless conduct pursues another person or otherwise violates another’s peace is liable to a fine or up to two years’ imprisonment (ung.no). In September 2025 the Norwegian Supreme Court upheld a conviction under the section for a Facebook post meant to damage another person’s professional standing (HR-2025-1726-A). So a general harassment offence is not unheard of in the Nordics. The Norwegian section, however, lacks two key parts of the draft: an explicit rule that a commercial motive is not an acceptable purpose, and a list of protected forms of activity.
France addresses online harassment, Germany the “sole purpose”
- Article 222-33-2-2 of the French Penal Code punishes repeated harassment that degrades the victim’s living conditions. Committing it online is an aggravating factor, and a concerted “raid” by several people counts as harassment even if no one acts repeatedly on their own (LAGBD). This matches the draft’s open question about the online dimension, but does not deal with commercial motives. The draft’s situation is also its mirror image: one perpetrator and many victims, each encountered only once.
- Section 226 of the German Civil Code (Schikaneverbot) prohibits exercising a right if its only possible purpose is to harm another (buzer.de). The idea of “no other acceptable purpose” is therefore old, but in civil law, not criminal law.
In Finland, recent legislative work has focused on, among other things, coercive control in close relationships (Verkkouutiset 2023, LA 35/2025). I did not find a Finnish proposal for a general harassment offence. Nor did I find a provision in any country that states directly that ad revenue or an audience gained from harassment does not make it acceptable. The novelty lies precisely in this commercial rule and in combining it with a Norwegian-style general provision that has a purpose test precise enough for Finnish law and a free speech exception, and in the draft explicitly covering serial one-off harassment of different people. The search for counterparts was originally done from the angle of long-running harassment, so I have not separately searched other countries for provisions on serial one-off harassment.
Theoretical value
Without the law, platforms and existing offences handle part of it
The baseline is the near future without the new offence. AI-based moderation on platforms will improve anyway, EU platform regulation requires action on illegal content, and the most serious harassment is already punishable as stalking, illegal threats or defamation. The new offence is worth only the harm that falls between these and that the law would prevent through deterrence: harassment that neither frightens nor lies but humiliates and obstructs, where each victim is encountered only once, and which is often allowed under platform rules.
Fermi estimate: roughly $0.2–18 billion a year
Assume all wealthy democracies adopted such an offence.
| Factor | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of gender-based cyber violence in the EU | €49–89 bn / yr ≈ $54–98 bn | European Parliamentary Research Service 2021 (EPRS, annual basis: EIGE) |
| Extension to all genders and in-person harassment | × 1.5–2.5 | own assumption |
| Extension from the EU to all wealthy democracies | × 3–5 | own assumption |
| Share of harm falling between existing offences and moderation | 5–15 % | own assumption |
| Deterrent effect of the law on that share | 2–10 % | own assumption |
Total harm from harassment would thus be roughly $240–1,200 billion a year. As a sanity check on scale: in the United States, 41% of adults have experienced online harassment and 25% more severe harassment (Pew 2021).
- Lower bound: $240 bn × 5% × 2% ≈ $0.2 bn / year
- Upper bound: $1,200 bn × 15% × 10% ≈ $18 bn / year
The range is therefore roughly $0.2–18 billion a year. An order-of-magnitude estimate, not a forecast.
What swings it most: whether a fine deters anyone
The deterrent effect swings the result most. A fine alone may not deter a perpetrator whose channel earns more than the fine costs. That is why the aggravated form and the commercial rule are the most important parts of the draft in terms of value. Pulling the other way is the risk that an imprecise provision would make people avoid legitimate criticism too. If the free speech exception does not work in practice, the net value could fall to the lower bound or below zero. The figure also excludes the cost of extra work for police and courts.
Revision history
- v2 (Oct 3, 2026): Corrected the core of the post (author's correction): the problem is not long-running harassment of one person, but harassing hundreds of strangers once each to gain viewers