Movie Subtitle Fansite Raided By Copyright Industry And Police
falkvinge.net
falkvinge.net
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.
Imagine if the Executives at the all of these entertainment companies looked at it like this.
And speaking about really under-served - there are deaf people among us.
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.
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).
As for $1 mobile apps, same deal but with less confidence that the app is worth even trying, much less paying for.
But "underserved" still exists. I'll discuss Netflix as I have the most experience with them, but I think most of it holds true for iTunes, too. FWIW, Amazon's video service seems a bit worse than Netflix.
Pirating movies offers a far superior playback experience. Netflix usually has shitty subtitles: limited languages, sometimes ALL CAPS, no choice of hearing-impaired versus speech, no rich overlays (like some anime subtitles, where they'll overlay translations next to signs, etc.). The audio channels are also limited - many shows only offer terrible English dubs.
There's no easy way to take advantage of your sound setup. With normal players on Windows, it's trivial for me to divert low-frequencies to my subwoofer (using the simple on-motherboard audio jacks). No special hardware required. On Netflix? Uh, use the Xbox (ugh) and hope the movie has a 5.1 track.
I can't control quality on Netflix. Switching to HD is a crapshoot, even with a solid connection, and sometimes HD just isn't available. Jumping around, even to parts I've already watched, requires buffering again. And if a show is too dark/light, I can apply video corrections, too.
Oh, and if you're travelling? Enjoy the library of content randomly changing, and then you'll find certain shows lose their English audio/text and require <geo-located country's> audio or subtitles. Not to mention being able to copy a file over to a tablet for a drive or flight.
Plus, DRM doesn't get in the way. My folks have Netflix on an Apple TV (with a shitty Toshiba LCD TV). They regularly get HDCP errors, that seem to go away at random (change HDMI cables, restart things, try different HDMI ports on the TV).
Netflix wins purely on that it makes discovery and management easy and the UI is simpler (duh). The actual core playback product is terribly subpar.
I pay for Netflix and Hulu, and still download the content they offer to avoid these problems. I use Netflix mainly to check out a new show when I'm literally too lazy to pull over my wireless keyboard and grab a torrent.
Netflix, studios and TV would be terribly upset if someone bothered to write a torrent search/download/manage/playback UI that was as slick as Netflix.
99 cents, once, is a pittance. When it's repeated over and over, it stops being a pittance. The app stores are flooded with minimum-price apps that are useless trash. I completely understand people that pirate cheap apps when there are no demo features.
And when that requirement is not provided, what we have is flawed product being sold.
And now with this news it seems that some people insist on their right of selling flawed product.
Again, there is no point of arguing if you don't understand it.
This is not zero sum game. It is possible for both customer and publisher lose; it is possible for both to win at the same time.
If the (potential) customer doesn't feel it's a big enough win for the price being asked, they can used their expenditure budget elsewhere to what they perceive to be a bigger gain.
If the price being asked is greater than the cost they are willing to bear, it's up to the (potential) consumers to reassess their priorities within their means.
From their point of view, it doesn't hurt their customers in the slightest, because their customers don't need subtitles (and if they did, they wouldn't be able to use them either way).
Also, is VLC legally playing DVDs? I thought they used DeCSS or something to bypass the DVD's "protection".
Maybe so, but in 99% of the cases, the people using the subtitles have not also downloaded the film in iTunes.
They just use them with the film they got off a torrent.
(Sure, they might have also "bought the DVD", but I doubt that too, if my friends are people I know are any indication).
No, the download method is very much relevant. People download from torrents files they DON'T own any license for (from DVDs or whatever).
The just casually pile on new movies to watch.
Oh, and they are not previewing the movie to "consider it for purchase" either.
Also think about how awkward it is to record free broadcast television on a computer compared to letting someone else package it.
Sure. But that's like 1% of use cases. Most people download movies they don't own -- to see new stuff without having to buy the DVD or go to the movies. Nobody I know (in several countries) downloads only (or even mainly) movies he owns from torrents.
That's how you get screeners on the most popular torrent lists. I seriously doubt those people own the DVD when it's not even released yet.
So, while you do that, and I sometimes do it (rarely), it's not representative of what is usually done.
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.
Arguably, the benefit to consumers should outweigh the harm to license models, but that's not what the law says, currently.
Thing is though, as a civil claim, the monetary incentive is clear on the movie companies side but not the "pirates". I suppose with all things being equal, in the spirit of fair play, we can expect to see headlines stating these people have been awarded a massive sum of money in the future right?
People get confused about copyright because it is confusing. It isn't what it was when it was created and your interpretation of copyright makes no allowance for fair use, and as far as I am aware those precedents set in the 80s still stand to this day. So until they don't, you're only half right.
Umm, no. It may be unethical but the "pirates" have no copyright protections for a movie dialogue unless they wrote the movie.
(Granted, that the "phonorecord" must be in a "specialized format exclusively for use by blind" is fuzzy.)
“authorized entity” means a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities;
The owners would have plausible deniability I feel, they don't know whether their users are deaf. Then it would be down to the copyright owners to address whether individual users had rights to format-shift audio tracks [they purchased] in to a format they could consume [specific language subtitles].
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.
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...]
edit: fixed analogy
I guess argument could be made that the actual site owner made money from ads (assuming there were ads on the site).
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.
yeah, those word are a dumb concept.
The creator is still prohibited from distributing the work without securing a license from the copyright holder of the original work.
Yes. Even for a book, you have to buy the rights for your language/country to be able to legally put out a translation.
But seriously, that is a fascinating topic (copyright law as it applies to automated or real-time mutation & usage of existing content) that I've also thought about before..
I wonder if this will become a big enough issue in our lifetime to warrant legal intervention..
There are cases (at least in Scandinavia) where the subtitles on a Norwegian subtitle site showed up on the Blueray version (noticeable due to huge cultural mistakes in the translation), when the Norwegian site clearly had subtitles first.
I'll start holding my breath for when the law will be applied equally on both sides.
Oh right, selective justice.
PS. Yeah, I know, "sharing is not stealing!!!1! blah blah blah". Please pay attention here, this example does not equate the two. I am pointing at the pattern "It might be wrong to do X in the first place, but I am outraged when the X is done to the X's perpetrator!"
The law in question: https://lagen.nu/1960:729#P17S1
Other than all those times, yeah, sure.
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.
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.
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?
If they don't provide decent subtitles, then in that particular area of culture, they have failed. So why do they deserve to keep the right we gave them in that particular area?
To me it's so simple... You don't do the job properly? You no longer have the right we gave you and therefore we can do it ourselves.
Then you have to also consider the fact that many of the subtitles included on DVDs and sometimes even theatrical releases (at least in Sweden and Norway) are very often lifted from online sources the movie companies attack (rather than them hiring actual translators for all the markets they wish to conquer).
Finally... I might be wrong on this but what happened to fair use? There were cases in the 80's that cemented our standard of fair use. Humming a song on the street is fair use, providing translated derivative works when no alternative exists is fair use.
No it isn't. Any more than translating Harry Potter into a language for which there is no current translation constitutes fair use.
When you purchase a movie, or acquire rights to watch that movie you also acquire rights to consume the script, no? The movie is the script rendered in to an alternate form, visualised and audible (to must users).
Is there not an argument that transforming the sound output in to an alternate consumable format, be that braille/sign/subtitles or an alternate language, is mere consumption.
Is it right that if I translate a work - I've licensed - for a friend as we sit and watch it that I should be criminalised [it's generally a tort of course].
The point of copyright is after all to reward the creation of artistic works and benefit the public domain and stimulate the generation of culturally important works.
Shouldn't the copyright we grant as the demos ensure that all have access to the [potentially] culturally significant creations that we're protecting.
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.
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.
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?
The original music copyright wars were over sheet music (or even just chord transcriptions) and player piano rolls, and they haven't ended.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_book http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/18325210185.shtml
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.
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?
On another note: I still fail to see how the subtitles case is different than transcribing lyrics. They are used the same.
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.
Keeping people from tabbing my songs feels a little like keeping the blueprints of my songs hostage. And unlike blueprints for machinery, it is right there in the open, ready to be derived by anyone who's got the ear for it. If someone shuts down tab websites, they're just making a lot of people do a lot of extra work (everybody tabs the same song, for only themselves), or force them to buy a tab book (there is... if there even is one). It isn't even comparable to buying a CD, and then ripping the songs for it to play on your own mp3 player and only for yourself; you buy a song, you listen to it, but then you have to buy the tabs for it on top of it, or do all the work yourself even if someone else has done it before? When someone distributes copies of a song by someone, they are illegally distributing copies of someones work that took time and money; but with distributing tabs, you did all the (derivative) work yourself.
Well, at least those people that have to tab every song they want to learn will get a better relative pitch out of it.
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.
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.
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.
Then have people use public Tor-relays (sites that let you use abcbla.onion.whateverrelay.net to access Tor with a normal web browser) to access it. Shutting down a proxy that has nothing to do with the content should be far more difficult.
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.
You could type out a book in a text editor, but that isn't the same situation as this website.
(also, I hope the charges (if any) are dropped, I just don't think this is the same as google translate)
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.
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
The frustrating issue is how little effect any of our outrage will have on the end result unless we channel it into something useful.
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.