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).'"

Comments

Re:Illegal thing...

[Frymaster]

If it is illegal to translate, the Polish police was right in arresting the guilty.

to a certain degree, this makes sense. witness the 2003 illegal translation of harry potter and the order of the phoenix. it was so bad that the quality of the content was dramatically reduced... at one point the translator even wrote "Here comes something that I'm unable to translate, sorry."

so, the idea of having 'approved' translators can be necessary to preserve the integrity of the content.

my source for this is here