Movie Subtitle Fansite Raided By Copyright Industry And Police

http://falkvinge.net/2013/07/10/fan-subtitle-site-raided-by-copyright-industry-aided-by-police/

by ceeK • 13 years ago

218 132 13 years ago

guylhem• 13 years ago

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.

mapleoin2• 13 years ago

Well actually the people who created the subtitles were most likely breaking copyright law themselves if they didn't have explicit permission from the movie owners. Subtitles are themselves derived work.

sillysaurus• 13 years ago

Maybe, but what they were doing is harmless in every sense of the word, and law is about repairing harm.

wwhitman2• 13 years ago

Transcribing audio does not transfer ownership. People get amazingly confused about copyright. You can argue that all info wants to be free, which is very bad for privacy, but you cannot argue if you transcribe Star Wars now you own the dialogue.

sk00byd005• 13 years ago

Sure but then Netflix and Universal stealing translated subtitles from these "pirates" and including it on their commercial content is also piracy.

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.

gerhardi3• 13 years ago

The subtitles are transcription of art made by other people. As a contrast, you shouldn't borrow books from a library and read them aloud and record it and start distributing your "self made" audio books on your website.

colanderman2• 13 years ago

Actually, that's explicitly allowed by copyright law (EDIT: so long as you're in the accessibility business): http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#121

(Granted, that the "phonorecord" must be in a "specialized format exclusively for use by blind" is fuzzy.)

pyrocat• 13 years ago

It's not just a "transcription" it's people taking their own interpretation of the dialogue and translating it however they see fit. Some people leave in puns, some people take them out, some people add a note at the top of the screen to explain the cultural significance of a certain line.

josephlord• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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...]

wslh• 13 years ago

I'd love to see an improvement on speech recognition + translation to display automatic subtitles.

sk00byd005• 13 years ago

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.

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.

madaxe4• 13 years ago

"Snow White" is a derivative work. Doesn't stop Disney from owning it lock, stock, and barrel - so why should this be any different?

Oh right, selective justice.

pallandt• 13 years ago

Interesting, I never thought about it that way and it surprised me because it's fairly obvious they are indeed derivative work.But you're right, they've jumped the shark on how they handled it.It's unfortunate they feel the need to make strong statements only by involving the police.

pandaman• 13 years ago

So it would be equally outrageous when a thief's stolen goods are returned to the original owner? I mean, it might be wrong to disrespect property rights in the first place, but is it even more wrong if it is done again?

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!"

rmc• 13 years ago

The subtitles are a derivative work of the film. It's illegal to make and distribute a derivative work of a copyrighted work without permission.

gerhardi3• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

dedward• 13 years ago

I partially understand it, but I can't accept it as long as I'm unable to get the media I want with the subtitles I want. I'm perfectly willing to pay, but all too often I simply can't.

h455m0• 13 years ago

Doesn't this make Google Translate illegal too?

jalanb• 13 years ago

Not for long at the rate Google services are dropping: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3001634?p=maps_android...

jerf• 13 years ago

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".

yaix• 13 years ago

No. Google has enough money for lengthy court cases and lobbyism.

zipppy• 13 years ago

Google isn't distributing translations. They're simply providing a tool to generate translations.

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)

petegrif3• 13 years ago

No. Google Translate is a tool, just like a DVD burner. It may of course be used in a way that, for example, results in a copyright violation, just as a DVD burner may be used in such a way, but this does not make the tool illegal. The law has been clear on this since VCRs.

andy_ppp2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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_ppp2• 13 years ago

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.

dobbsbob• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

... 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.

madaxe4• 13 years ago

This is what TPP is for. Bugger all to do with promoting trade, plenty to do with copyright enforcement.

MichaelGG4• 13 years ago

Or it moves to a decentralized or anonymized system. Subtitles are small enough that distributing them over a system such as Tor is quite feasible.

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.

hawat• 13 years ago

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

Zaephyr• 13 years ago

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".

ollysb• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

janesvilleseo• 13 years ago

Wow - you have summed it up perfectly. "Pirates are just under-served customers"

Imagine if the Executives at the all of these entertainment companies looked at it like this.

archgrove• 13 years ago

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.

pessimizer3• 13 years ago

The customer loses out. Subtitles serve the same purpose as region coding.

brazzy5• 13 years ago

I think you mean "the publisher and distributors lose out when geographically exclusive licenses are undermined, and the customer when they are enforced".

probably_wrong• 13 years ago

Unless I'm mistaken, there is no Hollywood-approved way of getting a movie in such a format that allows to apply your own subtitles to it. Therefore, all the customers of this site are pirates, and annoying pirates is what the Copyright Industry does.

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).

jeltz3• 13 years ago

I am pretty sure you can use subtitle files when playing DVDs with vlc.

coldtea6• 13 years ago

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.

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).

Dylan168077• 13 years ago

Is that supposed to be a problem? In some countries where basic cause and effect are respected, they don't try to stop you from downloading a copy of a file you already own a license to.

nnash• 13 years ago

One thing I've noticed in pirated copies of films is that if there is a language being spoken other than english there will often be no translation for it which is especially annoying when a foreign language scence goes on for two or three minutes. I've used http://www.opensubtitles.org/en and vlc to get around this.

marban• 13 years ago

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

lmm2• 13 years ago

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

btipling2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

"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?

btipling2• 13 years ago

"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?

kzrdude• 13 years ago

Not everyone thinks that 'copyright' is a property right. It's just a copyright.

narcissus• 13 years ago

Totally agree. We give a company the 'right to copy', in exchange for them improving culture.

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.

AngrySkillzz• 13 years ago

This is one of those cases where the application of the law flagrantly offends general sensibility to the point that it is clear the law requires modification.

sk00byd005• 13 years ago

Scripts are copyrighted but the translated subtitles are never straight translations of scripts (as I have found out in recent years being English in a non-English country), there is a level of interpretation (using a similar phrase, or a different cultural reference, perhaps just converting imperial to metric).

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.

petegrif3• 13 years ago

"...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.

pbhjpbhj2• 13 years ago

"The dialog is just the script, so of course it's copyrighted. It doesn't matter how you sourced the script." //

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.

mchusma• 13 years ago

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?

MichaelGG4• 13 years ago

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.

hauk12• 13 years ago

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?

pessimizer3• 13 years ago

Lyrics and guitar tab sites were attacked heavily by copyright owners years ago, most went completely down. I'm not even sure why the number of them started slowly creeping back up years ago, other than a a changed focus by the legal arms of record company associations.

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

Dewie2• 13 years ago

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.

hnha2• 13 years ago

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?

belorn• 13 years ago

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

sk00byd005• 13 years ago

Before coming to Sweden I would have probably agreed with that, now, however, I am inclined to believe Swedish laws are only applicable to Swedish people where and when America is not involved.

Other than all those times, yeah, sure.

kurrepalt• 13 years ago

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!

petegrif3• 13 years ago

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

etler• 13 years ago

It seems like this might be the most important comment here. If so, then the law is being discarded just because the companies at hand are pushing their weight around.

AliAdams• 13 years ago

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.

madaxe4• 13 years ago

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?

frankacter• 13 years ago

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.

fasouto• 13 years ago

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

markshepard• 13 years ago

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).

njharman• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

jahewson2• 13 years ago

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.

th2• 13 years ago

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".

jahewson2• 13 years ago

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.

o_nate• 13 years ago

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?

ceeK• 13 years ago

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

hmsimha• 13 years ago

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

Movie Subtitle Fansite Raided By Copyright Industry And Police

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