One of the more bizarre issues to emerge from the August War between Georgia and Russia is the question of whether Russia’s military conducted that mission wearing camouflage designs it stole from Finland. Finnish authorities are looking closely at images taken in Georgia of the Russian army allegedly wearing M/05, a camouflage pattern based on digital images of Finnish forests.
The M/05 pattern is copyrighted and legally protected by the European Union, leading Finnish commentators to wonder if Russia has committed copyright piracy. The IHT news agency reports that Finland’s government has decided not to make an issue out of this with Moscow, especially since the legal protection is not recognised in Russia itself.
But Captain Eero Karhuvaara, a spokesman for Finland’s Defence Staff, says the local newspapers are running with the story. Finns don’t have a special attachment to their army’s camouflage design, but it’s the principle they’re riled up about. Russia’s Interior Ministry flatly denies copying Finland’s pattern.
“None of us uses the M/05 camouflage for their uniforms,” a ministry spokesman said to Komsomolskaya Pravda, a daily Russian newspaper. “No one wears it. Our quartermasters haven’t heard of it. It seems that the Finns simply wanted to publicise their product and came up with this story. This false story.”
The M/05 design was created from tens of thousands of digital photos of Finnish forests, Captain Karhuvaara commented. It took years to create so Finland has banned reservists from using it and filed for copyright protection within the European Union. “If Russian Ministry of the Interior troops were to invade Finland,” he said, “we would have big trouble.”
People being killed in Georgia and all the military looks at at it’s the patterns of their uniforms; disgusting.
Armies are everywhere the same, a bunch of sick people.
Damn. I bet if the Americans had know that you could copyright military tech, they’d have done it with the atom bomb.
A hard lesson to learn, but one they have done. Now the rest of the world cannot make use of that US marine cap.
Finland has an Army?
Anything at all is OK, as long as Russia is the one doing it. Doesn’t matter how barbaric or idiotic it is.
But hell breaks open on the heads of those who point out the least tiny thing, because Russia will throw a gigantic wailing thrashing kicking tantrum like a spoiled brat and scream LIES!! LIES!! while murdering their own journalists
and sealing shut the Kremlin archives.
They are KNOWN liars and thieves and treaty breakers and betrayers of faith, and betrayers
of their own grand and glorious culture and no
one DARES to call them on it because of the egotistical THUGS that have ALWAYS been permitted to run the country.
Typical Russian attitude to the law… ignore it. But, Finland shows all too little willing to pursue Russia when it does things wrong. Finland should realise that the days of finlandisation are truly behind us, Finland should assert itself more; it’s a European Union member state and a democracy. No more need to appease Putin’s new corporate mafia state.
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If the design had been good – Finland would not have seen that it had been copied!