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Comment by devsda | Hacker News Reader

> The problem with sites that extract text from movies and other content is that they reduce people’s desire to pay a fair price for content, which can lead to people not seeing the official full-length movies, causing great damage to rights holders

The article doesn't use the word "subtitles" so its not clear what they provided. Did they create subtitles in another language like english or just a movie plot (elaborate) summary ?

Considering Japan has no fair use exception, doesn't movie reviews also reduce people's desire to pay fair price.

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What they provide is a text transcription of every words spoken (文字起こし) accompanying by a screenshot of the relevant scenes (in its original language). It’s less like elaborated summaries and more among the line of "posting a closed caption along with a relevant screenshot"

So you can read the movie like a comic book?

That's actually... kinda cool.

I can totally see how that should be copyright infringement (as opposed to just subtitle files).

But at the same time, I'd really like to try "reading" a movie that way, just to see what it's like.

It was briefly a thing in the 1970s. They called it a "fotonovel", and similar names:

https://www.allaboutthewaltons.com/merchandising/fotonovel.p...

The Star Trek ones were particularly popular.

That's wild! Thanks so much for sharing.

> So you can read the movie like a comic book?

people also enjoy the opposite experience. when my kid was 4-5, we watched these youtube videos which were just books. the camera hovered over a page of nursery rhymes, and the narrator would read them out loud. its fairly popular among immigrant parents who don’t speak good English but whose kids go to school in the us/uk etc. I wouldn’t know the meaning or how to pronounce several phrases in say Little Jack Horner sat in a corner etc. - so better to watch the book than read it.

I also follow a journalist on twitter who makes these videos of the new york times. So instead of subscribing to the newspaper and reading it, I am watching the newspaper being read by this journalist, who then adds some color to the topic as well, so I know what to think about this topic.

Do you have a link or some searchable name for the journalist? I’ve been intrigued by this genre for a while now.

The hashtag is #NYTReadalong. https://x.com/hashtag/NYTReadalong?src=hashtag_click

Now that you mention it, I remember reading through the entire first script of of Alien from 1976[1], which was really cool. I now feel an urge to re-experience that.

[1] http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/alien_early.html

While there is no general doctrine of ‘fair use’ in Japan, there are some equivalent exemptions provided by the Copyright Act, such as:

• quoting from and exploiting a work already made public fairly

and to the extent justified by the purpose of the quotations;

• private use, to a limited extent;

• reproduction in libraries;

• reproduction in school textbooks,schools and other educational institutions;

• use for those with disabilities; and

• reproduction for judicial proceedings.

https://www.aplawjapan.com/archives/pdf/file/GettingtheDealT...

I'd say a use by any other name is just as fair.

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