RE: swedish copyright law and exceptions

Peter Sint wrote:

>A few years ago the Church of Scientology vs XX charged persons on
copyright violation about publishing some of their 'secret' teaching material on the Internet.
In the process they presented the published passages. Thus they became legally public (assume that I downloaded and read the queer content, ROTFL). The lawyers of the Scientology sect could have asked to withhold the material from the public but failed to do so. Thus for a while this court records were legally copyable. (The lawyers demanded later non-disclosure).<

This is not exactly correct. Under US copyright law, a copyrighted work does not lose its copyright protection by virtue of being made public. What happened in the Scientology case referred to is that the Church claimed TRADE SECRET misappropriation, not copyright infringement. A trade secret DOES lose its "secret" status once it is made public, for obvious reasons. Thus the Church lost its trade secret claim. The Church of Scientology has been more successful in the area of copyright infringement claims.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Paul Sint [mailto:sint[_at_]oeaw.ac.at] Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 8:59 AM To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Re: swedish copyright law and exceptions

At 11:08 Uhr -0800 04.12.2001, copy right wrote:
>I came across an interesting story recently concerning
>the use of video evidence in a trial in Sweden.
>http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/30/0639238
>
>It appears that the police had recorded television
>coverage of protests against an EU meeting from the
>television, and subsequently used the tapes in the
>prosecution of a protestor.
>..
>My question for any Swedish copyright experts out
>there:
>(a)Is there an exeption which allows the use of
>copyrighted works in public prosecutions? and
>(b)What about in circumstances such as these where
>there has been the creation of a derivative work.

I do not know anything about Swedish law but I do not doubt that there is an exeption to use it as evidence (as with other proprietary or confidential information). The question is less about derivative in this case but on falsification/misrepresentation. I guess the court could even demand the original tapes if necessary (possibly on demand of the defendents) and question the journalists and camera personnel.

However, the question is also whether it becomes public domain in the process.
In the USA records of court are public domain. A few years ago the Church of Scientology vs XX charged persons on copyright violation about publishing some of their 'secret' teaching material on the Internet. In the process they presented the published passages. Thus they became legally public (assume that I downloaded and read the queer content, ROTFL). The lawyers of the Scientology sect could have asked to withhold the material from the public but failed to do so. Thus for a while this court records were legally copyable. (The lawyers demanded later non-disclosure). In this case the question was rather if critics should have access to proprietary, non-disclosed (and thus unpublished) material. I do not know whether video tapes may become part of the record.

(I am not a lawyer)

-- 
Peter Sint
sint[_at_]oeaw.ac.at


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