Are Swedish Police Violating Copyright Law In Creating Shoe Database?
from the if-the-shoe-fits dept
Sweden has certainly been an interesting country to watch on copyright issues. Home of The Pirate Bay, the original Pirate Party, and an awful lot of people who seem to feel pretty strongly that copyright law is out of control, there are still plenty of Swedes who feel the opposite way and support stronger copyright law. It often appears that law enforcement in Sweden is strongly aligned with those interests, working hard to prosecute The Pirate Bay and having staff members that seem to jump back and forth between the police department and the entertainment industry.So, it's a bit amusing to find out that the Swedish National Police may be in a bit of hot water themselves after building a national "shoe database" (Google translation from the original Swedish) for use in tracking what kinds of shoes make what kinds of tracks. But how did they build the database? They just went online and downloaded pictures from various websites.
And it turns out that might not be legal.
The police claim that the law lets them ignore copyright in solving crimes, but an intellectual property professor quoted in the article notes that such an exemption only applies in the direct police investigation of a specific crime -- not for the sake of building up a general database. The professor suggests that this appears to be a clear violation of Swedish copyright laws.
While I do think it's silly that this should be considered infringement (a database of shoe treads? really?), I do find it amusing when organizations that always promote themselves as strongly pro-copyright discover how that can come back to bite them.
![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Talk about tripping themselves up ....
man they are being given the boot ....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Talk about tripping themselves up ....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Talk about tripping themselves up ....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Talk about tripping themselves up ....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Talk about tripping themselves up ....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Sigh, I shouldn't be this mean. I must have no sole....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
As always
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: As always
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Damn you dark helmet....
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
As a somewhat serious aside
I can get trademarking, even patenting, but copyright? Is a shoe tread artistic expression?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: As a somewhat serious aside
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
search engines
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Or maybe the hostage in this video tried to give us an important hint coded into an obscure movie quote. How should we know? What if a victim says the robber looked exactly like the villain from that movie, how are we supposed to create a proper wanted photo? Can't do biometric searches if we don't download those movies.
And porn! All of it. For investigative purposes only, of course. Gotta put those beauty spots in our database, we might recognize someone.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Our police here in Sweden
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it used the term "intellectual property", which generalizes
about a dozen totally different laws. That term is
propaganda for our enemies, and every use of the term helps
them by confusing these different issues.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]