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Comment by johndoeee | Hacker News Reader

> The reality is likely to be: they make a very small amount from ads and user donations that might, if they're lucky, cover the costs of hosting

Opensubtitles has a VIP program at $15 a year.

It's quite easy to find the person who runs the site and, according to their CV, this is basically their job. That'd make Opensubtitles a for-profit piracy site, i guess.

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> according to their CV, this is basically their job. That'd make Opensubtitles a for-profit piracy site, i guess.

Guess what: Non-profit != for-free && Non-profit != for-a-loss.

If in order for opensubtitles to fulfill its envisioned role needs full-time attention, it is legit to pay yourself or hire an employee, paid by the ad and or subscription money. That's what also happens on all registered non-profit organizations.

Yeah, I saw it had a subscription model for VIP users. I'm guessing they're not getting Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates level rich off it though.

Subtitles aren't piracy in any way though. Kind of similar to legality of torrent sites but even less questionable.

I don't think they're implying the subtitles themselves are piracy, but the users of opensubtitles.org are overwhelmingly using them for pirated media. The subs are all indexed against scene versions of the video files (as you can tell from their names), and that's what most users are using it for. After all, streaming services, DVDs, and other legitimate ways of consuming these shows/movies already come with subtitles.

No, the 0.1% of subs for obscure indie shows that didn't have native subs doesn't change that.

It takes hours of work to translate one hour of movie, so when a translated subtitle is copied, it is most certainly piracy. If you are faster than that please consider becoming a translator for sites like the TED foundation.

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