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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."
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.
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
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.
Sure, but the actual point of it all is that you already have the film (so you've paid). One more example of copyright law getting it completely wrong.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So that a company in another country can't, for example, take the novel you wrote, translate it and not pay you a cent.
"We apologize for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked."
As a native English speaker living in Thailand for a few years, I can offer a prospective from this side of the earth. Legalities aside, the native Thai movies have English subtitles during the first run in the theater. However, when the movies are released on DVD, they do not have the English subtitles. They used to have them, lets say 5 years ago, but because of piracy of (Thai) movies abroad (read: Malaysia), they no longer distribute DVDs with the English subtitles. On a 'blockbuster' release, the distribution rights for other outside of Thailand will be picked up by some company, which will usually include the English subtitles, as well as the native languages for whereever it being distributed. As a consumer here, that means if I wish to watch a normal Thai movie here, I better see it in the theater, because nobody will pick up the distribution, hence, there won't be a DVD release with English subtitles. As far as the raids go, I can see why the entertainment industry doesn't like fan subs, at least from this angle. What I don't necessarily see is why they have enough pull to make raids like this happen.
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.
> 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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.