Hollywood Goes After Korean Fans Subtitling Soap Operas, Pressing Criminal Charges

from the copyright-failure dept

Thu, Jul 3rd 2014 5:41am — Mike Masnick

We've written a few times in the past about the movie and TV industries irrationally freaking out over fans in other countries providing subtitles for works that aren't being released locally in that language. These are always labor-of-love efforts by fans who want to share the work more widely by providing the subtitles that the studios themselves refuse to offer. And yet, because of standard copyright maximalism, these efforts almost always end up leading to legal action.

The latest such example involves Fox, Warner Bros and four other Hollywood studios pressing criminal charges against 15 internet users in South Korea for daring to do the most horrible thing in the world: making their soap operas watchable in Korea by adding subtitles. And, of course, thanks to US pressure creating a ridiculous "free trade" agreement with Korea that includes ridiculously draconian copyright requirements, the punishment here can be extreme:

People who make subtitles without permission from the original authors or producers can be given a five-year jail term or fined up to 50 million won [about $50,000 US]

The police involved in this case, go on and on about the "harm" these fan subtitles are creating. They claim, without any evidence or numbers, that there was a massive decline in some cable broadcast revenue based on this and, also, that those poor professional Korean translators are being put out of work.

The [anonymous police] officer went on to say that a cable broadcast, which has aired U.S. dramas, held an emergency meeting recently after experiencing income loss following dwindling viewer ratings because of the massive spread of subtitled dramas on the Internet.

“Professional translators were also hit hard by the subtitle makers. I understand that the U.S. television drama producers took legal action against them to issue a warning to end such an illegal practice rather than making money through an out-of-court settlement fee,” he said.

This is positively insane. This is not what copyright is supposed to be about, and the fact that it's being considered a criminal action to add subtitles to US soap operas is simply ridiculous. While the potential fine is a lot lower than statutory rates in the US, just the fact that this is considered a "criminal" matter at all, rather than a failure by these Hollywood studios to adequately serve their market, really says an awful lot (and none of it good) about how distorted the debate over copyright has become.

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Filed Under: copyright, criminal copyright, korea, soap operas, south korea, subtitles
Companies: 20th century fox, warner bros

51 Comments

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That One Guy (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 4:00am

Criminally bad taste perhaps?
“Professional translators were also hit hard by the subtitle makers.

Assume, just for the sake of argument, this was true. With a sane response to fansubs like this, that 'hit' would be because those airing the shows realized that there's people out there working, for free, to provide subtitles for the shows(suggesting that the current offerings are not in fact sufficient for the market in that area), which indicated that they could cut their translation costs drastically by getting in touch with those people.

They likely wouldn't even need to pay them, just offer them access to the show before anyone else, both as 'payment', and so they can translate the things, anyone going through the hassle of translating a show to provide subtitles for it is obviously a huge fan of it, and would consider early access a major perk.

However, given the lack of any evidence of 'harm', and the fact that they're not even tossing out any numbers as far as damages(and really, that's just plain lazy. Even hollywood goes to the trouble to throw out numbers, even if they are ridiculously laughable and debunked almost as fast as they get mentioned), I'm guessing it's just the usual scapegoating, where no one wants what they're selling, and rather than admit this, they're blaming their 'financial troubles' on the first handy target, in this case those twisted and evil fansubbers.
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Ninja (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 4:46am

Re: Criminally bad taste perhaps?
I used to translate subtitles to Portuguese. I did it even for shows I didn't particularly like. My main goal was to make them available in my own language since the great majority of those shows (anime btw) never got any translation at all.

Also, while I don't consider my own translations to be that good when the entertainment industry decided to bring some of those series that Brazilian fansubs had done before the translation work was terrible. The bright part is that here the industry saw the flaws and decided to work with some fansubs for better translation and the police wasn't involved. Some actually shamelessly used the translations and gave no credit but shit happens, nobody do this for profit anyway.
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TG, 3 Jul 2014 @ 6:13am

Re: Criminally bad taste perhaps?
"Professional translators were also hit hard by the subtitle makers"

Let's rephrase that.

"Professional translators faced competition from the subtitle makers"
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 6:17am

Pretty soon...someone will discover how to translate and endcode and store to a .txt file. then, another app will come along and read and decode the .txt file

another app will be developed just to watch AVI/WAV files in english.

and a 3rd app will keep the two apps sync'd, but separate, but showing both the video and subtitle in two separate (but coincidentally sync'd) windows.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 6:22am

Anime
As far as I know, fansubs were a large part of the reason for the spread of anime in the international market. That is, fan-made subtitles opened up a new lucrative market for the original producers.

It wouldn't surprise me if fan subtitling of soap operas could do the same for them. That is, as long as it isn't killed in the cradle.
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scotts13 (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 6:26am

Yeah, competition
There was a certain Anime series I liked some years ago. I purchased probably-not-so-legal DVDs with fansubs. A couple of years later, when they became available, I also purchased the officially licensed copies - because I felt it was the right thing to do.

The fun thing is, the Official work was LUDICROUSLY bad - missing dialogue, incorrect translations, awkward westernizations of proper names, completely jarring, tacked-on title and end credits - even the font and positioning of the text was amateurish!

If this is what the Korean public is expected to be put up with, it's just sad.
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PaulT (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 6:31am

"a cable broadcast, which has aired U.S. dramas, held an emergency meeting recently after experiencing income loss following dwindling viewer ratings because of the massive spread of subtitled dramas on the Internet."

In other words: people have been able to route around an unnecessary restriction that blocks them from enjoying a show in the way they wish. Rather than recognise this and, say, employ more translators to enable a quicker turnaround or come with a business model that doesn't depend on artificial restrictions, we'll make criminals out of our own fans.

Same as ever, I suppose.

"Professional translators were also hit hard by the subtitle makers."

The question is why? Were there simply not enough translators available to translate the show quickly enough? Were the resulting translations of such poor quality that people had to search for alternatives (and as someone who spent the 90s watching horrific "professional" translations of Hong Kong movies, this is very possible)? Or, was the cable station's programming predicated on making people wait months after the show's US broadcast, giving people plenty of time to make their own translations?

Whatever the reason, my sympathy levels aren't particularly high, especially since a good translator has many other avenues of employment even if TV work dries up.
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Michael, 3 Jul 2014 @ 6:55am

Re:
The problem with your plan is it looks like a duck.
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Michael, 3 Jul 2014 @ 6:56am

Re: Yeah, competition
dirty pirate
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:05am

Re: Anime
For the MafiAA's

It's about, has been about, and will ONLY ever be about...

TOTAL FUCKING CONTROL!!!

But yea, I completely agree with you, the fansub market does open up markets where the original distributors did not go.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:08am

Re: Re: Yeah, competition
What if he just has a shower? And used soap too!
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DannyB (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:12am

The REAL answer
Stop watching! Stop listening! Stop consuming content produced by the insane.

This is the only real long term solution.

It's just not worth it.

There is a whole universe of alternatives.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:13am

Maybe Hollyweird should put on it's big-boy pants
And go after actual direct, egregiously hilarious, commercial infringement. In Iran.
http://time.com/2945771/watch-iran-shoots-a-modern-family-scene-almost-frame-for-frame/
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David, 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:14am

Re: Criminally bad taste perhaps?
“Professional translators were also hit hard by the subtitle makers."

Actually, this statement is false on it's face - since it's obvious that professional translators were NEVER hired to do this. Hence the frustration of fans leading them to do it themselves.

If the professional translators were paid, and the content released with subtitles, then the fan-made version likely would never exist.

This is a classic case of the industry refusing to service the market, and the market trying to figure out how to get the services it desires.
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ltlw0lf (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:26am

Re:
Pretty soon...someone will discover how to translate and endcode and store to a .txt file. then, another app will come along and read and decode the .txt file...

And sadly, the MAFIAA owned politicians will come along and say that none of this is innovation and that they should instead spend their time and money doing something new and creative instead.

I kinda wish there was a better evolutionary environmental pressures for politicians and gatekeepers. So that we could weed them out of the food chain and move on.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:36am

Re: Re: Criminally bad taste perhaps?
Hey, the fan translations can't possibly be worse then some of the video game translation issues.

Who can forget All Your Base Are Now Belong To Us? Phantasy Star 3's Portuguese translation was even worse than that. They forgot the ~ over some letters. That turned some items like 'Hunting Knifes' into Feces Knifes.
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Geno0wl (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 7:50am

Creating custom subtitles just screams "fair use" to me.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:02am

Already been done, except it's a plugin for a container format, and you don't even need more than one window.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matroska
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:05am

I have a question: Are these programs shown locally and legally in English, but not Korean? Or are they being translated and distributed illegally? If its the latter, then I can see why the rights holders are pissed. If not, I don't see what the fuss is over.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:08am

"The nerve of those fuckers adding value to our stuff."
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:15am

Simple solution...
Someone just needs to make an app that combines voice recognition and translation technology into a video player such that the translation is automatically done by the app. Problem solved.
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Michael, 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:20am

Re: Re: Re: Yeah, competition
pirate sympathizer
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:29am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Yeah, competition
Just because I like good smelling people does not mean I am a sympathizer.

Would you like to borrow the soap? Don't drop it!
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art guerrilla (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:53am

Re: Re:
i gave you an 'insightful' for that, because that is EXACTLY how the supremes supremely idiotic decision is going to be used by the MAFIAA...

we're all sitting ducks, now...
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 8:56am

Re: Simple solution...
See you in 20 years.
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BentFranklin (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 9:06am

Re: The REAL answer
That will soon be illegal too.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 9:47am

how can anyone other than the totally crazy entertainment industries actually think that writing subtitles for movies or TV shows is worth a 5year jail term? this has really gone too far! when the push back comes, and i wouldn't be surprised if it's getting closer to happening, i bet there will be some serious actions taken!
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Michael, 3 Jul 2014 @ 9:54am

Re: Re: The REAL answer
It may be already - if not consuming causes a lost sale, there could be damages.
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Michael, 3 Jul 2014 @ 9:57am

Re:
If they translated Gigli, a five year sentence is a little weak.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 10:19am

Re: Re: Simple solution...
Why do you say that? The technology is there it just has to be put together. It's just like the VCR, DVR, etc. By creating such an app, the developer isn't infringing on any copyrights any more than the manufacturers of those devices are. Furthermore, since the legal precedent has been set that when individual users use those devices for personal use with regards to copyrighted material that they have legal access to, those activities are perfectly legal, individuals using such an app to add subtitles to any video would also be perfectly legal. Problem solved. Technology routes around draconian laws again.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 10:24am

Re: Re:
You fail to consider that anyone who successfully translated that would have had to actually watch and pay attention to the entire thing. Shouldn't that be punishment enough in and of itself?
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 10:29am

Re:
Generally, the shows aren't shown at all in Korea. The US studios aren't willing to pay to subtitle their shows into Korean. Instead, they wait for a local Korean company to give them a huge amount of money for the licensing rights. Then the Korean company will write the subtitles and distribute the show locally.

Unfortunately, the studios charge so much for the privilege of subtitling and distributing their shows, it's almost never cost-effective for Korean companies to license the shows. The result is that most shows are never legally available in Korea at all.

The rights holders are pissed because:

a) In order to use a fansub, you also need the content that's being subtitled. As discussed above, there's no legal way to get the content in Korea, so the only way to get the content is to get it illegally. This means that everyone who uses fansubs is a pirate, and therefore evil.

b) If a US show somehow got really popular in Korea before any Koreans were allowed to watch it, it might get cost-effective for the Korean studios to distribute the show. This means that fansubs are competing with the hypothetical revenue stream the studios might someday get from selling rights to a show that magically became popular, therefore fansubbers are evil.

c) Any unauthorized use of the studios' IP is, by definition, evil. Maybe you could justify this with a slippery slope argument, but I doubt it. The MPAA just gets really emotional about this sort of thing.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 10:46am

Re: Re:
So the people in Korea are monetizing these shows? If that's the case, then this article is a giant mug of fail.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 10:50am

Re: Re: Re: Simple solution...
You are forgetting that the subtitles are obviously a derivative work, requiring contracts and massive payout to get permission to create them.
I just wish that was sarc but....
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 11:23am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Simple solution...
Are you suggesting that it would be against the law for a person to use something that translates a work for them? For instance, is it against the law for a blind person to use software that reads text to them converting the written words to audible sound especially if the derivative work is only temporary and isn't retained. Surely this would be considered fair use.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 11:45am

Re: Simple solution...
That would change it from a copyright problem, to a patent problem.
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Ninja (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 11:52am

Re: Re: Re: Criminally bad taste perhaps?
LMAO indeed! I've played Tales of Graces translated by some Spanish fan and it was great (just imagining the amount of effort to extract everything, translate and repack it right makse me wonder what kind of die-hard fan he/she is).
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PaulT (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 12:26pm

Re: Re: Re:
Would you like to elaborate on why? Or, are you one of those people who simply believe that any attempt from an audience to access content at a time, location, format, price or method not pre-approved by a corporation should be illegal?
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That One Guy (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 12:54pm

Re:
It's the 'When all you have is a hammer...' issue, they are completely incapable of competing with piracy, despite the fact they could all be destroy is with minimal effort on their part. Instead, all they know, and all they ever try, is increasingly harsh punishments, which, not-so-coincidentally, also increase their control, that being their real goal.
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PaulT (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 1:06pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Simple solution...
Are you aware that publishers have indeed been fighting against the allowance for blind people to bypass DRM in order to use screen readers for blind people, under the pretence that allowing this enables piracy?
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That One Guy (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 1:17pm

Re: Yeah, competition
The fun thing is, the Official work was LUDICROUSLY bad - missing dialogue, incorrect translations, awkward westernizations of proper names, completely jarring, tacked-on title and end credits - even the font and positioning of the text was amateurish!

Unfortunate, but completely expected sadly. Fans go through all the trouble of translations because they love the source(show, movie, whatever), and of course they're going to give their best, and do the best work that they can.

A company on the other hand, they're likely just doing it for the money, so naturally they're going to be as cheap and quick about it as they can, with the expected results from this.
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jameshogg (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 1:24pm

There are most likely hidden dissenters in North Korea who could use some creative material that shows them and others what life is like outside of their monstrous regime.

Anyone who denies creativity be expressed in another language is fucking contemptible. A hugely underrated reason to be hostile to copyright.
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afn29129 (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 1:49pm

Easily correctable mis-translations.
When the translated subtitles are contained with a separate data-file then distributing corrected translations are a lot easier..
and smaller.

Ah well.. Hollywood could never of thought of such a concept.
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Sheogorath (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 1:56pm

Reducing the harm Hollywood does to consumers
The police involved in this case go on and on about the "harm" these fan subtitles are creating.
Okay, so reduce this 'harm' by no longer providing subtitles that are accurately translated, and thus reduce the very real harm that Hollywood does to active consumers by taking away such a large paying audience, thus reducing the amount of money they have to fritter away on chasing people they don't intend to sue for alleged copyright and trademark infringements. Simples!
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Sheogorath (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 2:02pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Simple solution...
Indeed I am, PaulT. The real stupid of that specious argument is the fact that the big powerful rights owners know for a fact that only those who get official content (however they get it) are inconvenienced by DRM because pirates are getting copies which has either had it stripped away. To make matters worse, counterfeit DVDs are very often sold with their own copy of the original distributors' DRM on the disc!
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Sheogorath (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 2:06pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Simple solution...
are getting copies which has either had it stripped away
Oh, crap. A typo. Never mind, since I live in the UK, I can just ask Google to strike it from their record.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 5:43pm

The only criminals here are Hollywood.
For all the money they claim to be losing, they sure seem to have enough to buy all the laws and politicians they could ever need.
Ruling class v Common class.
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Anonymous Coward, 3 Jul 2014 @ 9:17pm

Prison
As a silver lining for those who get a full sentence, at least nobody will mess with 'em. After all, when other prisoners ask "What are you in for?" and receive the response "I got five years for subtitling a TV show," well... I'm sure word will spread: "Don't mess with that guy, he's the craziest mother I've ever met."
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That Anonymous Coward (profile), 3 Jul 2014 @ 11:31pm

Re: Re: Criminally bad taste perhaps?
Or they were paying someone in house to type the scripts into Google Translate and charging themselves a nice fee to hide the income.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Jul 2014 @ 8:21am

Re:
What justifies your piracy, I suppose.
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Evan, 2 Jan 2015 @ 4:28pm

I love how we're all trying to "justify" illegal downloading. It's pretty hilarious.

Just be grateful for the fact we could illegally watch/download these great shows and didn't have to pay anything!
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