This is one of those cases where I feel the results are technically correct, but that they are likely not what the average person (if thinking of their best interests) wants.<p>Instead of enriching culture and promoting understanding of foreign viewpoints this oppresses what is, at least in the US, the theoretical reason that such information monopolies are purportedly allowed to exist. I cannot see how banning this academic and educational work promotes the progress of science or "useful arts" (I recall this meaning roughly 'crafts-person skills').
I don't see that this really changes anything. Most fansub groups that I knew of were pretty clear that they would take down anything that they were asked to because they knew they were on shaky ground to start with.<p>On the flip side, most content producers (anime) didn't ask them to take them down until they had their own translations planned because it was helping them, not harming them.<p>Clearly, this group was not taking their stuff down when asked and even went so far as to sue the people who were asking. I'm just amazed by that move. I don't know anything about Dutch law, but I'd have been amazed if it worked out like they thought it would.<p>And despite what the article says, I doubt this will have any influence on courts in other countries.
Fan subs are an enabler for promoting culture and stimulating tourism. So it goes without saying that the administration of Holland doesn't at all mind that someone outside of Holland is making subtitles for a Dutch TV show or movie in English, or Hungarian, or Spanish or what have you.<p>I suspect they are just caving in to pressure from outsiders. If I were to guess, English-speaking outsiders from America.<p>Hey, look who is a member of this "Dutch" BREIN group: the MPAA.<p>If Holland weren't in the EU, they might have the guts to tell them to go home. "We don't mind Dutch TV and movies being subbed in English by American fans, so we expect the same in reverse; have a nice day".
I worry what this means for the future of deep-learning based audio analysis tools to automatically generate subtitles (for the hard of hearing).<p>Does this mean that YouTube's audio-recognition powered automatic subtitles are illegal in some edge cases? The platform can always have a ToS/shrinkwrap allowing for automated subtitling, but legacy videos created before the policy or videos that aren't owned by the uploader could cause legal problems.<p>Also, is this possibly case law that can be used to outlaw other forms of describing media, such as drawing representations of the scenes or writing descriptions of what happens?<p>Yes, that's pulling the current situation to obserb conclusions but sometimes that's what happens with copyright.... always trying to push the law in ways it was not intended.
Ruling (Dutch): <a href="https://stichtingbrein.nl/public/20170420%20SLOV%20vonnis%20NN.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://stichtingbrein.nl/public/20170420%20SLOV%20vonnis%20...</a><p>Short article on the ruling (also in Dutch): <a href="https://www.boek9.nl/items/iept20170419-rb-amsterdam-stichting-laat-ondertitels-vrij-v-brein" rel="nofollow">https://www.boek9.nl/items/iept20170419-rb-amsterdam-stichti...</a>
Things might be more subtle than they seem: These subtitles are a big enabler for piracy. If you are not as fluent in English, stuff like popcorn time isn't very usefull.
Greedy corporations leaning on governments to drive people away from their content, criminalizing remixing and making content unusable by the blind and others speaking different languages not approved. Plus, they probably want to charge a fee for alternate language or requiring purchasing the content again in that language. F that!
<a href="https://stichtingbrein.nl/public/20170420%20SLOV%20vonnis%20NN.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://stichtingbrein.nl/public/20170420%20SLOV%20vonnis%20...</a><p>Here is the original court ruling -- can someone translate (heh) this (I can't read it in the original)?
Making fan subs 'underground' I kinda feel like will make them more popular to create.<p>I'm not clear which way this was going language wise?<p>Like it or not English seems like it will become the world language so perhaps it's not all bad to make people watch things in English.