
Movie Subtitle Fansite Raided By Copyright Industry And Police - ceeK
http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/10/fan-subtitle-site-raided-by-copyright-industry-aided-by-police/
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ollysb
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

~~~
kyllo
Exactly. "Pirates" are just under-served customers. And in this case, they are
not even "stealing" anything, they are filling a market vacuum by creating a
new product for which there is significant demand and no other supply.

My wife is from China and wants to have Chinese subtitles when she watches
American shows and movies with me. Where is she supposed to get them? The
copyright holders and licensed content providers simply _don 't offer them_.
Fansubs are literally the _only_ available option.

~~~
archgrove
I no longer buy the "under-served" customer concept, unless by "under-served",
you mean they're waiting for "I want it delivered exactly when I want, in the
format I want, to do with as I want, for free" to be "served" to them. I'm
sure there is a some truth to it, but the fact that the "Pay what you want"
Humble Indie bundles are pirated, along with thousands of $0.99 mobile apps,
indicates that many people won't pay even a pittance for content they clearly
want, no matter how convenient the delivery or noble the causes.

~~~
VladRussian2
15 years after movie has been released and no more US DVD copies available,
only DVD available in Spanish markets with no English (and of course no
Russian) soundtrek. Of course cool and patient me would learn Spanish... (not
that i have anything against learning and even plan it eventually as well as
Chinese. Ni-hao-ma? do-shao-t'en? ni-dzao-sha-ma-minz?)

And speaking about really under-served - there are deaf people among us.

~~~
coldtea
> _15 years after movie has been released and no more US DVD copies available,
> only DVD available in Spanish markets with no English (and of course no
> Russian) soundtrek._

Sure -- but the most popular torrents are always the latest hollywood films
(not to mention screeners or rips before they are even released on a DVD).

The case for "15 years old movies with no US DVD copies" are not really
representative of the majority of cases. The long tail, maybe.

~~~
guard-of-terra
How does the "majority of torrent cases" relate to subtitles question?

~~~
coldtea
Because subtitles are used with movies.

And those movies come from torrents, more often than not, (even worse,
subtitles are actually made for specific rips, with respect to frame rates and
sync, and say so in their metadata).

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guylhem
Utterly outrageous.

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) _THEY_ should be able to sue these
companies.

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.

~~~
josephlord
I think that you are significantly wrong. Subtitles are a derivative work of
that which they are created from and should be covered by that copyright. The
creator of the derivative would have a copyright on that derivative but that
does not permit them to distribute it without the original work's copyright
holder's permission (and the original work's copyright holder would need the
derivative's copyright holder's permission to distribute that.

It may be however that there is a fair use argument that could be made in many
jurisdictions (based on the intended use being by a licensee of the original
work, the accessibility benefits and the (presumably) noncommercial nature of
the operation).

I would strongly oppose police enforcement rather than civil action and even
that would strike me as a bad commercial practice by the movie companies. It
would be better to either ignore the practice or even endorse it in some way
as there is no significant profit to be won by fighting and plenty of goodwill
to lose.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _Subtitles are a derivative work of that which they are created from and
> should be covered by that copyright._

Even if the subtitles are a translation?

There are usually many possible translations, and the words in translated
subtitles were most likely never written anywhere by the dialog copyright
holders. [and based on what I've seen, subtitles are often a rather .... loose
... translation to boot...]

~~~
VMG
You can't just translate Harry Potter and sell it or give it away for free.

edit: fixed analogy

~~~
gillianseed
But the creators/translators of these subtitles weren't selling them, they
uploaded them for free.

I guess argument could be made that the actual site owner made money from ads
(assuming there were ads on the site).

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hussong
You can't just translate Harry Potter and distribute it.

~~~
gillianseed
Well I personally think that translating and distributing spoken dialogue from
a film is quite different from translating a distributing a book. It's like
song lyrics in my opinion.

I realize that it is likely just as illegal according to today's copyright
laws, but that something like this would warrant a police raid is just beyond
me.

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belorn
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?

The law in question:
[https://lagen.nu/1960:729#P17S1](https://lagen.nu/1960:729#P17S1)

~~~
kurrepalt
The main thing here is that all subtitles from Undertexter.se (the raided
site) are entirely fan-made, e.g. dialogs interpreted by the sites users, and
then translated according to their own interpretation. I actually don't
understand -how- this could be copyright infringement, so if anyone could
explain it for me, I'd be glad!

~~~
petegrif
It has been explained in several of the comments. It constitutes the creation
of a derivative work.

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andy_ppp
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?

Can we not have this baked into the law that the basis for any police action
should be:

1) harm prevention

2) helping individuals who are being harmed.

The law is so complex and pointless at this point that we often forget why
it's even there.

~~~
mseebach
The law says very clearly that people who have their copyright violated are
harmed, so that won't get your anywhere. You're right, the problem in the law.
Trying to fix the law by making the police not enforce the bits we don't like
is a recipe for an even more complex legal system.

~~~
andy_ppp
Who specifically suffered because of this - not even the hollywood studios
should be thinking this is bad - I'd like to know. To make arrests/raid homes
for these sort of 'crimes' people should need to prove harm (rather than
assumed harm) which funnily enough is nigh on impossible when there isn't any.

There is far far more harm in the raids than in the original crimes - that's
how far gone the law is at this point.

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btipling
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.

~~~
marknutter
"It's the law" has never held much weight as an argument in my book. _Why_ is
it the law, and why has it been applied in this way?

~~~
btipling
> "It's the law" has never held much weight as an argument in my book.

It will when you're standing in a courtroom in front of a judge regardless of
what's in your book. I'm not saying laws are always right, they clearly
aren't, but to build a business on it and then be outraged when it gets shut
down?

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jahewson
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.

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.

I'm not sure how any of this works out under Sweedish law.

~~~
th
The studios could probably claim the audio, script dialog, or subtitles as a
work of their own, meaning the derivative is not sampling a "small portion of
the work".

~~~
jahewson
As I said, 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.
It _does not matter if the screenplay is a work in it 's own right_. Both are
covered by copyright and both are subject to fair use.

In order to claim fair use we must show that a subtitle file != screenplay. If
I sell you a screen play, do you get subtitles on your screen? No. If I give
some actors a subtitle file can they perform the movie? No, they don't even
know who's reading what line. So, even if the screenplay were being _sold_ as
a work _with value_ , which it's not, we can see that the subtitles file is
still only a portion of the screenplay (and one which renders it useless as a
screenplay), the very essence of "transformative". Likewise for the audio,
you're missing everything except for a transcript of what was said, and one
designed to be read by a computer at that, and which fails to label _who_ is
saying it, so it's a portion of even a transcript.

In a nutshell, they've taken something large and commercial and turned it into
something small and non-commercial. Not only that, but worthless without a
copy of the genuine movie! I'm not saying that the move studios don't have a
copyrighted work - of course they do, but fair use trumps that, and should do
in this case.

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hauk1
What would happen to lyrics sites and guitar tabs?

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?

~~~
Dewie
I want to hear the arguments of someone who thinks that a person that sits
down and meticulously transcribes a song by ear is doing something that is
ethically wrong. I really do. Is learning someone else's song something that
should be illegal (I'm just throwing it out there, not talking to you
specifically)? Or are they afraid that someone is going to make a midi file
out of the transcription and have a grand old time rocking out to this vastly
inferior version of the song while playing Super Nintendo?

Given enough time I can tab songs myself if someone decides to shut down such
websites. So what does that make it on my part, some kind of copyright
thought-crime?

If making tabs for songs of other people is illegal, I really want to believe
that it is just some side-effect of the overarching copyright laws.

~~~
hnha
I am all for free sharing but here is one:

You are absolutely free to write down tabs. You are free to learn a.song. You
can play it how you want as often as you want.

The problem is distribution to others. Imagine if you were a song writer who
sells tabs of his songs. Wouldn't it be pretty terrible if someone ruined that
by distributing cheaper or free tabs?

~~~
Dylan16807
Whoever is buying the tabs could have just listened. And learned the song and
played it as often as they want. So my business model is _already_ based on
preference, not copyright control. I'm already competing with free. So the
answer to your question is a clear 'no'.

~~~
hauk1
Could that argument be applied to the subtitles? If the use was "private" or
just among friends. Just as how tabs are used. You are allowed to write it
down, and play it.

On another note: I still fail to see how the subtitles case is different than
transcribing lyrics. They are used the same.

~~~
Dylan16807
You could probably use a similar argument.

But I'm pretty sure the premise that you're allowed to play a song by someone
else 'as often as you want' is incorrect.

------
gerhardi
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?

~~~
schrijver
Transcribing subtitles and diffusing is exactly like transcribing lyrics and
diffusing them: making a derivative work and spreading it without permission
infringes on the copyright of the song/movie the transcription was based on.

If it’s considered a crime or an offence depends on the scale and context of
the infringement and probably on the country that you’re in.

~~~
gnud
Not really the same thing at all.

A subtitle file is pretty useless without a video file or disc. Transcribed
lyrics, however, can be enjoyed on their own, without having access to the
music.

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hawat
Nothing new, a few years ago the same happened in Poland
([http://napisy.org/](http://napisy.org/)). After investigation, the case was
closed, no one been charged. Disgust remained.

~~~
Zaephyr
FWIW an update from the linked article says that in the Polish court found,
"that translating from hearing and sharing for free is not infringing the
copyright".

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dobbsbob
The subtitle site that replaces this one will just link to torrents and be
hosted in China. Movie lawyers can't do anything about it.

~~~
toyg
... until China needs a favour from the WTO.

15 years ago I thought we'd fix this crap with technology. It didn't happen,
and it's not going to happen anytime soon. Unfortunately, it's a political
problem that we'll have to solve with good laws.

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fasouto
What about content generated using these subtitles? A couple of years ago I
created [http://moviewordclouds.com/](http://moviewordclouds.com/) based on
movie subtitles, it could be illegal too.

------
frankacter
A couple of questions I hope someone can answer:

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?

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.

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h455m0
Doesn't this make Google Translate illegal too?

~~~
jerf
If someone pushed the issue, it may very well be. It's probably similar to
search itself... it established itself on the web before copyright became an
issue, for most people it's just "part of the web" and they don't think about
it, but my personal opinion is that if we had somehow made it this far without
an Internet search engine, and someone tried to start one today, it would be
nearly instantly destroyed in massive, numerous copyright lawsuits.
Translation functionality has also been around for a while, and may be
similarly sort-of "grandfathered".

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njharman
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).

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.

The average person doesn't care cause the average person doesn't know "user
submitted translations" are violation.

~~~
Pwntastic
Then perhaps it shouldn't be a violation if the average person doesn't even
know...

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marban
Related question: What's the legal aspect of fan-translations of video games
e.g. good old SNES RPGs (jap-to-eng)?

~~~
lmm
They're generally illegal to distribute - they're derivative works of the
video game in question, which is copyrighted by someone else, so you need a
license from them to distribute your translations.

There's the slight wrinkle that in some cases there's no one with standing to
sue you - copyright is a civil matter in most countries, so you can only be
sued by the actual copyright holder, and sometimes the relevant company
doesn't exist any more, at least in practice. But it's breaking the law and in
theory you could be sued.

/IANAL; I worked on a fan translation Jingai Makyou before an official one was
announced

------
markshepard
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).

------
AliAdams
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.

The frustrating issue is how little effect any of our outrage will have on the
end result unless we channel it into something useful.

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mchusma
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?

~~~
MichaelGG
Copyright requires an aspect of creativity. It's unlikely the copyright would
be held up being essentially a list of facts.

Also I'm not sure you recognize the number of permutations. Even a small 4x4
icon with a 16 color palette has 2^64 possibilities.

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o_nate
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?

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ceeK
The BBC have now reported on this also:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23252523](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23252523)

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hmsimha
How is a subtitle database any different from a legal standpoint than a lyrics
database?

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madaxe
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?

