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Polish Fans Held By Police For Movie Translations
michuk writes "Nine people involved in a community portal Napisy.org were held for questioning by the Polish police forces this Wednesday. They will be probably be accused of publishing illegal translations of foreign movies (which is forbidden by Polish copyright law). Napisy.org website was shut down immediately afterwards by the German forces (since the servers were located in Germany). The service was the most popular Polish on-line portal where users were free to submit translated subtitles for popular movies. 'According to Polish copyright law any "processing" of others' content including translating is prohibited without permission. The people held (aged 20 - 30) were questioned on Wednesday and Thursday and then allowed to leave. In case of being accused of illegal publishing of copyrighted material, they can spend in jail up to 2 years (in the worst case).'"
If it is illegal to translate, the Polish police was right in arresting the guilty.
Rather than blaming them, the law needs to be changed.
This has to be a bad Polack joke. I bet they arrest signers for the deaf at concerts, too.
... must be a cold day in hell today :)
The following part of USC 17 Chapter 1 seems pretty clear to me (my emphasis): USC 17 Chapter 1:http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17
upload the subtitles so the actual content isn't distributed?
Just a thought.
Would that mean a Polish person can't legally alter a Wikipedia entry? If I go and deface the entry for some leading Polish politicians could they be arrested if they fixed the page? That's really quite tempting. :twisted:
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Dziewi spoeczestwo zwinity w pewien wspólnota przewóz Napisy.org bylimy trzyma pod ktem stawianie pyta a propos Polski Police siy zbrojne ten roda. Oni maj by sta by oskary od publikowanie nielegalny przekady od obcy kino ( który jest niedozwolony przy Polski prawa wydawnicze law ). Napisy.org pajczyny by zamyka w dó bezporednio potem a propos Niemiec siy zbrojne ( skoro ten serwery bylimy umieszczony w Niemcy ). Obsuga bya ten najliczniejszy ludowy Polski u - specjalno przewóz gdzie uytkownik bylimy wolny wobec skada przetumaczony podtytuy pod ktem ludowy kino. 'According wobec Polski prawa wydawnicze law wszelki " przetwarzanie " od drudzy nawizywa kontakt wliczajc w to tumaczcy jest zabroniony rezygnowa zezwolenie. Ludzie trzyma ( stary 20 30) bylimy zakwestionowany u roda i Czwartek a nastpnie dozwolony wobec zostawia. W case od trwajcy oskary od nielegalny publikowanie od prawa wydawnicze materialny , oni puszka metalowa wydatki w jail odpowiednio do 2 lata ( w ten najgorszy case.')"
What about playing that game where you turn down the volume and do pornographic voiceovers?
The translated subtitles were published online. You realize that the "Your" in "Your rights online" doesn't just refer to you, specifically, right?
I am not a crackpot.
found it with the usual search engine.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
On the surface there's not much to the story, but look a little deeper.
They were releasing translated subtitle files to be used with videos. Presumably, since they needed translating, these were foreign discs. Possibly imported, sure, but the implication is likely that people need these subs to enjoy material not released by the media cartels for that region, and therefore instigates piracy: the favorite bogeyman.
Of course, since the big companies couldn't be bothered to translate it and release it in that region they're not losing any money at all and piracy wouldn't have any impact. UNLESS they want to keep the options open and release localized version later.
Now we're in "region coding" territory. A technique the industry uses for no technical reasons* other than to lock customers in to buying movies at the maximum prices possible.
These weren't people making knockoff translations and selling them in the face of Polish-localized content. This was simply providing a service so people could expand their horizons a little.
I suppose Babelfish is illegal in Poland, too. Ha-rumph.
* one could argue that the content could be mastered for differences in NTSC/PAL timings and color spaces, but I'd say this if the content player can output in varied formats, the technical limitation is gone.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Officer: Ok, come along nice and easy and nobody will get hurt.
Fan: Geck, wo ist mein Auto?
Officer: Suspect appears to be armed with translated movie quotes, shoot on site!
This sounds like it could have a big impact on the anime fansub culture in Poland. Fansubs distribute the entire video, seems like these people were just offering .sub texts.
In the USA you get less jail time for phyiscally beating someone and taking their copyrighted material than publishing copyrighted material.
Um, because it's Illegal in the US as well?
2 years? For the equivalent of making closed caption files?
I am always reminded of the rules applicable to Commonwealth of Virginia employees when I was one.
An employee could be fired for one instance of a level 3 offense immediately. It took more than one level 2 offense to be fired.
Punching one's boss was a level 2. Sleeping on the job was a level 3.
Sleeping while driving a bus might be worse than punching a boss, but most of the time this seemed upside-down and backwards to me.
On the topic of making your own subtitles: can someone point me to some software that helps you to create subtitles on Linux? I have looked, but haven't found anything really yet. I would expect something that works in conjunction with a video player like mplayer that helps to record (approximate) time stamps of when the subtitles should appear. Any hints?
Vee vere invited, punch vas served. Check vit Poland.
Admittedly, I don't know much about the process of DVD subtitling, but I was under the impression that these were files distributed separately from the DVD rip. If that's all the site was supplying, isn't this akin to allowing the distribution of emulators but not the beloved ROM images associated with them?
Sigs are for suckers.
So these guys enabled people to be able understand what the characters are saying in a movie.
I can see why this would be a threat to Hollywood.
After all, who will want to see the bulk of these films when it becomes common knowledge that behind the beautiful people and gorgeous back drops are atrocious dialogue and paint-by-numbers plots.
It is NOT illegal to translate only text from a film. It is illegal to translate film and release it publickly. But they were only spreading translated texts, and translated text is not whole copyrighted material, so copyrights for translations belong actually to translator.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Fortunately, Polish authorities didn't realize they locked these fans on the outside of the jail cells at the same time trapping the police inside and the fans just ended up walking away.
You're amazed that Polamd has laws, and that the Polish police enforce those laws? Is that it?
I guess I understand the perspective, given that President Horehay is planning to reward the US's Mexican marine population (10 million, or so) with an amnesty.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I like Aegisub.
More Twoson than Cupertino
the impact of the internet is that it turns what were previously audiences into publishers. now everyone is a bertelsmann or a metro goldwyn mayer, in their living room or den or study. the same sort of power dynamics was at work over the creation of the printing press: fedualism depended in part on the ignorance of the serfs, the inability to read. when they were freed form this ignorance due to the sudden cheap and wide availability of the printed word, all sorts of political dynamics changed, fomenting revolutions and evolutions i think that are still playing out in the world over 500 years later
well the internet frees people from being tied to distribution channels. and as with the printing press, there is an entrenched power that is losing because of this. of course movies, music, etc. is not going away because of the internet. but how movies and music are made and distribtued and how they make money is very definitely going to change, and there are real losers because of this. big (currently rich powerful, not for long) losers
but the internet was originally designed to route around damage in the event of nuclear war. compared to that, the "damage" that entrenched media interests will exert on the net is paltry, and easily routed around
there's no putting this genie back in the bottle
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The dialogue in films is indeed copyrighted. It's just that film scripts and transcripts are one of the longest continuing copyright violations on the modern Web. (Who else was around for the whole "Kirk dies in Star Trek Generations" uproar, fueled by that script being leaked to the Internet?) So, people have just become a bit more complacent about it than most other copyright violations.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
SubtitleEditor. A screenshot. It is a little bit unstable, but works like a charm.
translate politician quote?
provide news after the CNN?
translate wikipedia entry?
Defense line: it wasn't direct translation, it was an interpretation of the dialogs.
The US and Japan both are the same -- translations are derivative works. I wanted to translate an old silent-era Japanese film and release it to the public, but it's still under copyright in both countries. However, there's no freaking way this film would ever be commercially subtitled, so it's a shame that potentially interested parties are being deprived of the opportunity to see it.
On a more positive note, there are other silent-era films available to watch. I suggest "I Was Born But..." by Yasujiro Ozu. Unfortunately, it's only available on VHS, and is apparently out of print. It's hilarious, and shows pre-WWII Japan for anyone who is interested in history.
So you think he meant that "Your rights online" only refers to the rights that one has, not the rights one doesn't have, or wish one had? I can see how you could read it that way, but that would make for a rather dull discussion, chatting about all the things one could do online if one wished to . . .
I am not a crackpot.
The ideas of copyright and patents have grown into this thing we call IP. I've mentioned this dozens of times now, but it is the simple truth.
IP laws have been about control of information and not profit for at least 25 years. Simple profit motives tell you that region encoding is not a bright idea. If someone wants to pay to import a disk, have it translated, etc. they will still be in the market for a nicely done local language version. You could potentially make two sales, or one sale if you never would bother localizing the product. Region encoding stops that. Why?
Control. If information can be commoditized it can have rights "attached" to it. That means transaction regarding information you posses must be approved. Approval means cash. It's far more lucrative in the long-term to own the ideas in your book, and not own the rights to copy that book. If you own the ideas, you have control not only over distribution, but over book reviews, derivative works, viewership (5 people in your home theater? Tickets please), crappy approximated renditions on your out-of-tune guitar, or anything else the owner wants. They can even restrict you from the information entirely if they want.
This has not been about control of copy, but of control of information.
Translation constitutes derived work. Derived work cannot be distributed without consent from the copyright holder of the original work. This is an old, established, and international concept of copyright law. There is no way Poland can break international treaties and change their laws on this.
Hmm... so, you're saying an unjust law in another country is fine, and should not be criticized by others, as long as the law is in place?
'File it under the "Polish crime blotter" category and not "Your rights online" because clearly the Polish don't have these rights.'
Perhaps their government doesn't recognize their rights, but that is different from the people not having rights. Depending on how you look at it, rights are implicit in the optimal coexistence of multiple individuals, or rights are granted by whomever enforces them. Either way, shutting up and pretending they don't exist means they will continue to not exist (or continue to be ignored).
Does this mean i can go to Poland, call your non-english speaking mom a butt monkey peg-legged pirate (by singing it!), then sue you for translating it to her without my permission?
Punishment for translating? Looks like things haven't changed in Europe much.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
huh, hearing that they claim these folks face jail time is odd.... yes it is illegal to make available translations of copyrighted work...but copyright laws generally revolve around the money trail. If you make cash from translations, THAT would make you criminally liable, your own govts legal system can charge you criminally. But... and someone smarter can correct me... its that exchange of money that makes it a criminal offense, if No money changes hands then that puts you in a bit of a grey area...outside of Criminal liablity in your country...when that happens international copyright laws (that your country willingly agrees to) then allows for civil responsiblity, where the copyright holder of a foreign country has the right to sue you in your countries court of law...to FIRST prove your actions caused a loss...and then to recover damages. That these folks put stuff up for free...i would have thought, would have left them open to civil liablity at most, so why the threat of jail time? UNLESS...and seeing how the polish version of mpaa/riaa is involved, the criminal charges well stem from Piracy accusations not the translations. and seeing how free translations helps polish folks watch pirated vids....its easy to see why the "he Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry" aka mpaa/riaa would WANT translations to equal piracy.
The difference is, most films are made in the USA, and few USA filmmakers provide translations into Polish.
Whereas most Polish films are already available with English subtitles (admittedly- or rather, thankfully- usually EN:GB).
This sounds like something the EU normally fixes. I'm surprised the EU haven't created a legal exemption in these kinds of cases. Translating into minority languages is normally heavily supported by the EU. I wouldn't bat an eyelid if the guys take it to the European Court or somesuch and win hands down.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
in case anybody wonders why this happens ...
movies in poland are normally dubbed with ONE guy translating all the roles in the movie.
i already hate the german dubbing. not lipsync. you may even see a totally different movie with german dubbing and their creative dubbing. .. etc etc ... but at least its professional and every actor gets its own german dubbing-actor.
but the most horrible thing is an age 40-50 guy translating the movie by himself.
its been like that forever in poland.
Seems to you perhaps, but to me your understanding seems to lack the idea that film as a work of art cannot be "recast, transformed, or adapted" from just subtitles.
As well as the concept that a subtitle is really an "annotation" of what the spoken dialog would be if translated to another language.
This is the same argument that the RIAA is using against websites that post song lyrics -- they own the copyright and they want to make money off of the lyrics. While I disagree with the spirit of it, the letter of law says that the RIAA is right in that case. :(
but wait until people go to prison for the unauthorized
creation of content, that is the illegal creation of _original_
content. That is not as far fetched as you might think
considering there are many creative people out there
who have the skills and the technology. They might not
be able to create content as slick and polished as what
Hollywood turns out, but they might have a more compelling
story to tell. I think with anybody with a little imagination
can come up with a better plot than what they have turned out
as of late, such as the people captive in close proximity to
dangerous creatures scenarios (snakes on a plane, Alien,
Alien vs. Predator).
This post itself reads like it was translated from the Polish by an amateur subtitler.
Of course, that's par for the course for Zonk.
Translation of culture is needed for mutual understanding between nations. It's quite crazy to arrest people for translating stuff. Who in poland would/could view t without translation in the first place? ^^;;
You know that Slashdot is viewed worldwide, not just in the US. (And, yes, I'm an American).
Dammit, i hate how international news skew local ones. Im from Poland, so i know what's going on. Here's the recap:
Napisy.org exist for the sole purpose of providing subtitles for xvid and ogg videos. And videos of everything - Lost, blockbuster movies, you name then - they've got subs for that movie. Now, our local MPAA argued once already that this is illegal - and it's bullshit because what i create is my own and i have the right to do with my creation as i please. They tried this once already with another site - napisy.info and failed miserably.
Now they did this again with this site, but instead of sending a C&D letters they came with the police, but looking for - you guessed it - pirated movies! And they did find some! Why? Because the translators have to work on _something_.
So why is this a story? Because the media-cartel couldn't find any other way of taking down the site. Sounds familiar to you americans?
And please don't post stuff like "let US take over". No thank you, ill have this any day instead of your DMCA-scaring RIAA/MPAA litigation and religious/political censorship and software patent law. Imagine this : not only are we allowed to have modchips in our consoles (yay demoscene!), we could remove the SimLock from our mobile all along (something i hear you can do legally just now) and face no consequence - it's legal.
What we're mostly scared shitless that one day our laws and freedoms may resemble yours.
Why should the Americans have all the fun?? Where does it say that they have a monopoly on perverted sex? It's a worldwide copyright orgy of joy and sadomasochism. Wheeee! Just be sure to keep the penicillin handy, if the stuff still works... Lots of nasty bugs out there...
Okay mods, do your stuff! Pegame duro! I'm getting excited already.
What?
It is, of course, necessary to prohibit all unauthorized translations for at least half a century, as the quality of the film would be adversely affected were it to be shown with poor translation. Whereas, if the film were not shown at all then its quality would be unaffected.
I'm not really quibbling with you - you make a good point. I suspect that you may agree with me that, as it stands, copyright law is hardly the tool to achieve what you describe. It has come to be above all an instrument of control, often at the expense of quality, availability, even profit.
There are good reasons for this. Among them are the divergent interests of the parties involved (artists and publishers; corporations and employees) and the (dis)economies of scope achieved by large media companies when they are able to impose high costs on their smaller competition while maintaining internal regimes free from copyright restrictions.
...FUCK THE GOD DAMN POLISH POLICE.
THEY ARE RETARDED FUCKIN GOD DAMN MORONS, I HATE THEM, AND SO DOES ~75% OF OUR SOCIETY.
I had to pay a bill for crossing an empty street when the lights were red (250 zloty, about $100), but they didn't cared about the guy who stole my cell phone.
The police used to control our homes and seek for illegal installations of MS crap, mp3s, etc while they all have pirated windows running on their home computers.
And now they arrested nine people for providing subtitles, while two streets away five bandits are "politely asking" some guy to give them his cell phone, wallet, all the money he has, and possibly his clothes (yes, clothes, the things he is wearing at the moment on his body).
Same thing with our politicians. To some people, "politician" in our country means "thief", "asshole", "idiot", or something like that.
I WANT MY COUNTRY BURNED DOWN.
Certainly a translation of a book is a derivate, even if it doesn't contain any of the exact same words. In the US, I would try for a fair use defense though. The subtitles have very little value without the movie, and I think you could reasonably consider the movie "the work" for this purpose. And makes it:
Transformative, but personal: 1-0
Imaginative work: 1-1
Part of work: 2-1
Need a copy of original work, thus not destroying sales: 3-1
Then again, it all depends on how you read the law, it would clearly impact the future market for localized copies, even if that market has not yet been exploited. If you consider it as a separate work, that factor goes the other way. Plus there's also whether the translation has colored the film, you are held to a much higher standard for that than merely restating the original text since everyone using your subtitles will experience that. I'd say the outcome isn't given one way or the other.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I suppose the angle here is that "gee, it sucks that what we Americans think is fine and dandy is illegal in Poland."
Pretty much, with one exception - We don't have that right in the US, either. But we damned wellshould.
If so, here are two choices for remedy: lobby for a change of law in Poland or convince Dub-ya to invade Poland and impose American law.
Presuming the Polish goverment, much like our own in the US, doesn't give two shakes of a rat's ass about what the plebes want, you missed the single most effective (and obvious, since it applies here) solution: Civil disobedience.
Certain all-too-alienable rights, as humans,we should all have, regardless of nationality. The US constitution enumerates a few (but not all) of them. Saying what amounts to "they broke the law, end of story" amounts to nothing less than passively accepting a tyranny of legal fictions.
I have had the displeasure of living in Poland for the last four years. What you need to understand is that all foreign films/series released to VHS, DVD, and TV are dubbed into Polish BY ONE MAN. Yes, that's right. One guy does ALL the voices for ALL the actors in EVERY movie! If it is decided that a certain film will not be dubbed (and there are many of these), there will never be the possibility of watching this film by Polish-speaking people, unless they speak English. In the large cities, finding someone who speaks English is becoming easier as capitalism takes over, but let me add that when I arrived here four years ago, absolutely no one spoke English! I had to visit the local university's English department to find any. So in order to bring the people of Poland classics like Twin Peaks, and a whole slew of Hollywood and non-Hollywood films, there's a group that focuses on writing subtitles to these films and series. It's basically something anyone can contribute to, and it's just like the Polish police to shut it down.
Every good thing that happens in this country gets shut down. It's completely hypocritical and they are targeting the wrong people. I live in a city of around 700 000 inhabitants and there are eight copy shops within 500 metres in any direction of my flat (I don't even live in the centre). I can go out to any of these copy shops and have a copyrighted textbook photocopied for about 3 cents (US) a page. Some copy shops even keep a library of texts that one can look through and order. Anything you want you can get, whatever subjects you're studying. One guy even has a website where you can order copied books beforehand, pay by credit card, and pick them up at your leisure! Most of the students here in Poland have never owned a real textbook, everyone buys photocopies. While it's true that many Polish students live off of less than 100$US a month (the average salary here is about 300$US a month or 5zl an hour so their parents don't have much to give them), the copy shops are making their living off of copyright infringement. Any day of the week, one can also go down to a special market and purchase bootlegged DVDs, CDs, software, and games. The police don't do much about these people, either.
In order to combat book photocopying, the government started a tax on all photocopies of 3gr a page (about 1 cent US). Now all photocopies are about 4 cents a page, and the tax goes not to the publishers or companies being infringed upon, but to the government. I think it's something like the tax the Canadian government puts on blank computer media. I think it's ridiculous. In typical Polish style, rather than identify the problem and deal with it, they do something completely stupid. For two years after I moved here, there was dog shit all over the pavement/sidewalks wherever people walked. You had to really look where you were going, because you would step in it. Rather than teach people to curb their dogs, or give fines for not picking up after animals, they hired people to go around every morning and clean the sidewalks of dog shit! They need to think about their labour laws and how much people are being paid (in an EU country, no less!), but instead they worry about some young people doing the people of Poland a service by writing subtitles for those who don't know English (or Turkish, or Greek, or Hindi).
...the movies translate you.
Um try again. The translation is a derivative work. So while their translation does indeed have a copyright to his or her translation, without permission from the copyright holder they cannot distribute their work. Your argument that they were not spreading the whole work doesn't hold water. Excerpting is not an exemption to copyright law.
What do you know I wrote a novel
This sucks.
They were actually doing the copyright holder a favour, they introduce movies to polish people. Much people in Poland have very poor English skills, and wouldn't be able to understand it otherwise.
It is is a derivative work of the original text.
:-)
What might have been funny and legal would be to make up a completely different dialog and distribute it separately
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
But a translation isn't only your own creation, it's a derivative of the original work. Ownership of the rights is thefore joint between you and the creator of the original work.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Well one thing the article doesn't mention is what Gutek Film rep said about the site. Actually he stated that because the site like this one exists they are unable to sell niche movies or anime. They say who would buy a movie if he can download it and get polish subtitles for it. What he doesn't mention is that those user submitted subtitles were frequently much better than translations made by their people. Another thing that i could mention is that such a site is invaluable for deaf people. Actually when i read that news on one of polish portals, i couldn't believe. WTF ? Torrent/sendspace sites are running fine, and they shutdown site with subtitles ?????
Bush was right again! Curses!
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
Please invade us! While Dubya may be a right-wing idiot, each of our twin leaders is even worse.
And we have at least as many WMDs as Iraq had - so, please, don't forget (to invade) Poland. :)
Umm, "up to" already implies "(in the worst case)."
it is point of historical fact that the spanish, in the philippines, south america, central america, etc., would expressly forbid the natives from learning spanish, so as to retain power in the hands of the spanish
it is one of the reasons the philippines is an english speaking country: spain was there for centuries, but forbid the filipinos from learning written spanish, so as to retain their grip on power. when the americans came, despite all of their other injustices, they had no problem with the filipinos writing english. and so english is one of the official languages of the philippines today, and spanish a forgotten exotic historical curiosity (although there are a lot of spanish loan words in visayan/ tagalog, and the great filipino writings of the 1800s was in spanish, such as jose rizal, but he was amongst the most learned of the learned illustrados... he was executed by the spanish, by the way, for being too uppity)
the philippines even had it's own alphabet (derived from southern indian brahmi scripts) when the spanish came. the spanish wiped it out. on purpose
of course none of this has to do with feudal europe though, but you get my point now: this system the spanish brought over to the places they colonized was not miraculously invented on a boat along the way. it was borrowed outright from feudal europe
furthermore, are you going in any way say that the renaissance, and therefore the death of feudalism, was not powered by the printing press?
perhaps you do have a point though that the division between the literate and illiterate was not purposeful, but simply organic in nature. but surely you don't discount the value of illiteracy in keeping a serf a serf
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
a romantic for the feudal era. now i've seen it all
dude, there's a reason it is aka the dark ages. it was nasty, and brutal, and injust. farbeit for me though to interfere with your whitewashing campaign
let us hear all about the glory of the dark ages, and the horrible crimes of the eras that followed
(rolls eyes)
progress actually exists in this world friend, and moving away from the dark ages was nothing but progress
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
How do they determine that this is actually a translation? Presumably by having someone make an (illegal) translation and comparing the two?
and all that wacky stuff since then- printing press, antibiotics, the internet, a mistake?
i just want to know if you are a harmless romantic or a deluded wackjob
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Ve have vays of making you not talk.
It's one thing if you're making and distributing content for free.
If napisy.org was ad supported and made money from the ads, even if it gave away the content for free, they're still profitting from someone else's intellectual property - no one would view the ads and thus they'd bring in no money if it wasn't for the free content.
That said, I'd go after the owners of the site and any profits they made rather than users who really were offering their translation services for free.
There's also the good question about how it affects the revenue available to provide quality translations. This came up with the whole online guitar tabs discussion earlier in the week:
If there is a free, albeit poor, version - does that reduce the number of sales of a higher quality but costly version?
In a world with economies of scale, what effect does that have in the long run?
Example with made up numbers:
A professional translation and remastering the disc to include it costs $50,000.
A given movie gets around 50,000 Polish language sales.
The English/French/Spanish standard version of the DVD is $15. Figuring all Polish people want a Polish version, they can bump the cost to $16 and split the $50,000 equally amongst 50,000 sales.
Now a free, albeit poorer version is available. Half the people save cash by getting the cheaper option. Now they have to split the same $50,000 across only 25,000 Polish language sales. To recoup costs, the price margin is now $2 greater instead of $1.
Over time, that $2 rankles half the remaining people. Now Polish language DVDs are $19 for the 12,500 copies sold. That price difference gets big enough that just over half of the remaining users defect to the English plus generic versions. The remaining 5,000 Polish users are now dropping $10 in translation fees per disc just to pay their share while the other 45,000 are buying the English version for barely half the price.
At this point, with $15 English plus poor translation or $25 for a decent Polish copy, most of the 5,000 who have no idea how to run the software simply give up. With no market, the film company doesn't even bother paying for a Polish release.
Now every Pole gets to buy an English copy and read ban Polrish (deliberate typo) subtitles whilst bitching about how terrible the movie industry is for never releasing Polish subtitles.
I've no idea if it actually works out that way, how the numbers move, etc. But it's that fear that printed tab publishers have tried to exploit and it is at least worth considering the potential hidden costs of something that appear free on the surface.
To sum it all up: 1. In Poland, only old people fear Germans. 2. In Soviet Russia (well, almost) Poles don't dislike Germans. *RIMSHOT!*
You'd be surprised of the level of civil disobedience in Poland ;)
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Jaaa gibs mir du Hengst ... Jaaa O Jaaaa ooOOoo Jaaaa Ohhhhhhoooooo Jaaaaaa
just to let you people know the proper german dubbing.
thats a whole industry of "homeoffice"- mommys and daddys recording the stuff
nope.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
Let's see. There is at least some demand for decent subtitles, there are skilled amateurs willing to do the work for free and the current quality of movie releases sucks.
What would happen if you guys got organized, created a company and sold your translation services? If you were a corporate entity you would get more credibility with the copyright holders, which would mean more business, etc. You would get to do what you love, and you'd be paid to do it.
Think of this incident as a golden opportunity.
So... anyone have an english translation of that polish movie Sara? http://imdb.com/title/tt0120066/ ;)
Wouldn't that be something like pointing two mirrors at one another?
Poland is already in many ways an "American lapdog". Poland was used for CIA flights, the US is pressuring Poland to use it as a defense shield, and the US managed to sell Poland a bunch of supposedly defective F16's. Plus, Poland was one of the strongest European allies for the invasion of Iraq.
I'm honestly not sure what Poland is getting from all of this, but I suspect it has something to do with being afraid to hell of getting thrown back another century when WWIII eventually happens. Although it might be more political or economic in nature -- perhaps they're trying to get more industry to come in? They have low wages, but high crime. Perhaps the US backing is supposed to be seen as a sign to investors that Poland isn't that bad a place to open up shop? A lot of US companies are opening offices and factories in Poland. Just this past year, Google opened up offices here and Dell opened up factories.
Someone legitimately Polish will probably have better ideas than this, I'm not very familiar with Polish politics, not being able to read the language... I just live here.
Est Verboten!! ]yikes[
-GiH
The times when you could say German dubbing was world-class are definitely over.
About the last well dubbed movie I saw here was Falling Down. This especially means that the dialog was rewritten and not morphed into some kind of bastardized mixture between German and English (the true source of most "Denglisch" (Deutsch-Englisch) today, imho, and not advertisements).
Also, only a few Hollywood stars have a voice actor exclusively assigned to them these days. Most of the time, it's the same few (and mostly bad) speakers.
I haven't checked out any major movie in German for years and I switch my TV on like once a month. Seeing (or rather hearing) a trailer for the first LotR part was bad enough. That was the last time I heard something from a large production in German, and I'm quite glad about that.
I always hated dubbing, even as a kid I noticed the US shows had strangely "artificial" acting compared to genuine German TV. I didn't even know what dubbing was, I wondered how the actors could speak German when I was watching Knight Rider or The Fall Guy ("Ein Colt für alle Fälle")...
Maybe not in American law, but there was a Polish case in 2003, where a court ruled that a translation alone (i.e. without the video) does not count as copyright infringement.
Legal or not - fansubs are being recognized even by such conglomerates as International Data Group (http://idg.com/www/homenew.nsf/home?readform). IDG Poland released Ghost In The Shell, Akira -http://kiosk.idg.pl/sklep_artykul.asp?KP=ANIME+++ +++++++- and GITS Stand Alone Complex series with fansubs as on of the subtitles option. If fansubs hadn't existed before there would be nothing to release. But before the official release fansubs were illegal - catch 22 until we change the IP law.
Their "problem" is not about lack of legal translations of the films. The films are on the market on DVDs (with some lag, but they are) with proper Polish subtitles (or the guy "dubbing", whatever you prefer). The subtitles from napisy.org are used for xvid and divx movies, where you do not have subtitles. People download movies from the net and they need subtitles for them. There's where napisy.org comes.
Why do English-speaking people feel the need to use 'v', when they are mocking German accent? In German a 'v' often corresponds to a 'ph'/'f' sound [1]. So what you're writing is basically
:P Corollary: If you want to mock someone, please do it properly.
;)
"Phee phere invited, punch phas served. Check phit Pooland."
Now, that is just silly
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_orthography
PS. I probably abused English grammar, so feel free to do a cheap shot
i am wondering what you will tell me when for example you wish to buy shrek2 on dvd wchich prize is still about 20euro ? i am wondering what you will do when you will earn about 300 Euro per month and you must pay bills.4 electicty, water food, gasoline 1E/1L ? Life (i mean food,clothes,electricyty,fuel are getting more expensive, our earn's almost don't grow.
And sellers want to earn too much. last month i've been in BERLIN and belive me they have cheaper DVD's than we, they earn 5 time's more than we,
PLZ DON'T JUDGE US IF YOU DON'T KNOW OUR REALITY.