Police, Copyright Industry Raid Movie Subtitle Fansite

Swedish Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge reports that a fansite providing subtitles for movies has been raided by Swedish police at the behest of the copyright industry. "The movie subtitle fansite undertexter.se, literally meaning subtitles.se, is a site where people contribute their own translations of movies. This lets people who aren't good at the original language of a movie or cartoon put those fan-made subtitles – fansubs – on top of the movie or cartoon. Fansubbing is a thriving culture which usually provides better-than-professional subtitles for new episodes with less than 24 hours of turnaround (whereas the providers of the original cartoon or movie can easily take six months or more). What’s remarkable about this raid is that the copyright industry has decided to do a full-out raid against something that is entirely fan-made. It underscores the general sentiment of the copyright monopoly not protecting the creator of artwork, but protecting the big distribution monopolies, no matter who actually created the art."

Comments

Fuck 'em

[magic maverick]

Sure there is some copyright issues with translatins, but seriously, fuck the copyright holders, and the middle-men, in this case. And, of course, fuck the police.

What the industry needs to do instead of this sort of bullshit, is to contract with the fansubbers, and pay them for their work. The fansubbers provider a much quicker turn around on translations and subs, and are doing it for the love of the work. What better way to make yourself look even better, than to not just tolerate, but to pay!?

The fansubbers allow people to watch the media who would otherwise not be able to (due to not understanding the language). That's great. I wish them well.

Re:Fuck 'em

[sosume]

Well, those darned Swedes were in a clear violation of U.S. Code Title 17, 102 and 106. Which is punishable with a fine of up to $150,000, they should have known the law. Which makes me wonder, does the EU copyright lobby organize raids on companies in the US? Would the FBI cooperate?

Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive right

[tepples]

I don't see how it's "entirely fan-made". Under current law, a translation of an audiovisual work's original script into another language is a derivative work.

Only in US-style banana republics.

[boorack]

Or are you trying to apply corrupt US law onto Sweden ? There was similiar case in Poland (napisy.org) few years ago. Police raided site administrator and some folks who did actual translation. Then it tool 6 years for prosecutor to determine that those translations were actually legal because it was voice->text translation, not text->text, so it did not constitute derivative work. Yet prosecutors did everything in their power to prolong this case, so it took 6 years to close this case. From copyright cartel point of view it is mission accomplished: napisy.org is still defunct. Falkvinge is right that we truly have two-tiered justice system worldwide. It is totally corrupt, yet as long as people still get their daily fox-news-style crap-propaganda, everyone is apathetic enough to just get along with whatever fraud our corporate overlords instigate on us.

Re:Translation is a copyright owner's exclusive ri

[jedidiah]

> You aren't allowed to muck with someone else's work without their permission. That's the whole point of copyright,

No it isn't.

The whole point of copyright is that we do have something to muck with. Copyright exists to foster what you would describe as piracy. It is not a virtual land grab. That's just corporate propaganda.

No. The whole point of copyright is piracy.

The corporations have just distorted things.