Who loses out when fans provide subtitles for films? My partner's native tongue is Spanish and so we often want to watch films with Spanish subtitles. Unfortunately it seems incredibly rare that subtitles are provided through legal channels. I can't tell you the number of times I've paid for a film in iTunes only to discover that there are no subtitles available in _any_ language. There's subler but the timing usually doesn't match which means I'm forced to go to the pirate bay to download a film that we can watch that I've already paid for. The fans are filling a gap here which, speaking personally, I'm extremely grateful for and incredulous that film companies don't provide themselves. To shut people down when they're effectively doing your job for you (and the fans aren't taking any money) is infuriating to say the least. /rant
Utterly outrageous.<p>Copyright laws apply both ways. The subtitles were created by other people. They own the rights. If their work was raided or reused by other companies such as netflix (mentioned in the article) <i>THEY</i> should be able to sue these companies.<p>EDIT: what I mean is that, even if it is based on some piece of copyrighted work, the authors of the initial work can not just "steal" this derivative work. The derivative work does not enter the public domain and doesn't magically goes to the original author. It has a copyright as well. This is why it is outrageous to me. It may have been wrong in the first place to disrespect the original author copyright, but it is even more wrong if it is done again - such as by disrespecting the translator's copyright, as was done in the netflix example.
Don't subtitles (in Sweden) fall under exception from copyright if done to provide accessibility (aid for those with hearing disability) and if done as non-profit?<p>The law in question: <a href="https://lagen.nu/1960:729#P17S1" rel="nofollow">https://lagen.nu/1960:729#P17S1</a>
We clearly need a new relationship between the people and their governments when this is illegal. How does this raid help a single person and where is the harm to anyone?<p>Can we not have this baked into the law that the basis for any police action should be:<p>1) harm prevention<p>2) helping individuals who are being harmed.<p>The law is so complex and pointless at this point that we often forget why it's even there.
Scripts are copyrighted. The dialog is just the script, so of course it's copyrighted. It doesn't matter how you sourced the script. If you thought crowd sourcing dialog was legal then you were simply wrong, and I'm sure there was some level of interaction required where takedowns were issued before the police were willing to get involved. I'm not outraged, I just think the site owners were clueless. You can't invent your own laws or ignore existing ones no matter how passionate you may feel about your cause.
This is highly questionable. In the US at least "fair use" tends to cover non-commercial endeavours that only reproduce a small portion of the work - and the text of a film is a very small portion indeed. If the text is also contained only within specially formatted subtitle files then the work is "transformative", allowing a significantly different use from the original (especially when there is no commercial alternative). If a work enhances accessibility then this is generally well looked-upon when deciding if it is transformative and thus fair-use.<p>It's important to note that a subtitle file and a screen play are two very different things, as the former is almost certainly transformative.<p>I'm not sure how any of this works out under Sweedish law.
What would happen to lyrics sites and guitar tabs?<p>Some here say that "Scripts are copyrighted. The dialog is just the script, so of course it's copyrighted."
Which is fair play but would that not open for raids of lyrics sites as they provide the same service?
I partially understand the motive here; I guess that only under one percent of these "fansubs" are used with legitimately downloaded video material (never heard of this happening) and the availability and ease of use of the subtitles makes it more tempting to get videos from "pirate" sources. But is it actually a crime to transcribe a movie's dialogue with time codes and share it and is the situation similar to lyrics web sites?
Nothing new, a few years ago the same happened in Poland (<a href="http://napisy.org/" rel="nofollow">http://napisy.org/</a>). After investigation, the case was closed, no one been charged. Disgust remained.
What about content generated using these subtitles? A couple of years ago I created <a href="http://moviewordclouds.com/" rel="nofollow">http://moviewordclouds.com/</a> based on movie subtitles, it could be illegal too.
A couple of questions I hope someone can answer:<p>1. Why this site? There are many of these "fan sub" sites, this is not nearly the largest. Why was this site singled out? Is it there location?<p>2. How is this different from lyric sites, which in many cases are not even translating, but rather transcribing word for word in the native language. While they are thousands of these sites big and small, Rap Genius comes to mind as a local relevant site to position as an example.
I'm against current copyright regime. But, "user-submitted translations of movie dialog" is clearly derivative work and in violation of copyright (at least in USA).<p>If you want wide spread awareness of and support for copyright reform (and I do) then you MUST educate the average person just how egregiously overreaching, damaging, and one-sided copyright law is AND how fast it's becoming even worse.<p>The average person doesn't care cause the average person doesn't know "user submitted translations" are violation.
The problem has always been abuse of laws that simply don't move fast enough to keep up with the changing times .Companies with deep pockets to fund lawyers will always take advantage of the laws that were written for a different time (and there is a similar parallel to the IP/Patent as well).
As knowledge increasingly becomes more pervasive, copyright's demise (or at least redefinition) should be inevitable, although it is going to make a big mess before this happens.<p>The frustrating issue is how little effect any of our outrage will have on the end result unless we channel it into something useful.
Serious thought here, can you just come up with every possible permutation of dialog and submit to copyright, would this work? I recognize the number of permutations involved become difficult the longer the length. That said, anyone know if this would work legally if we could develop the algorithm?
It wasn't clear from the article, so forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but does the site in question distribute the subtitles only, or copies of the entire work with new subtitles added?
The BBC have now reported on this also: <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23252523" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23252523</a>
Related tangent. If GCHQ are intercepting and storing all traffic that transits the UK, they're surely the grandest copyright infringers on the planet. Why have they not yet been raided, and had their equipment seized?